Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

This study uses a “science pipeline” model and cross-national data to examine women's participation in science education and occupations in seven countries. Gender stratification in later science education and in science occupations is found in every country examined. Young women's participation in science education decreases with each stage in the science pipeline, but there is considerable cross-national variation in the extent of gender stratification in science. Findings show greater gender stratification in science occupations than in science education, suggesting factors other (...) than training help maintain inequality in high-status science occupations. (shrink)

Late in 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology (lIT) received a grant of more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum.! Enough has now been accomplished to draw some tentative conclusions. I am the grant's principal investigator. In this paper, I shall describe what we at lIT did, what we learned, and what others, especially philosophers, can learn (...) from us. We set out to develop an approach that others could profitably adopt. I believe that we succeeded. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In the literature on persons and their identity, it is customary to distinguish the issue of the nature of personhood—“What is a person?”—from the issue of per- sonal identity—“What are the persistence conditions of a person over time?” In recent years, Eric Olson and Lynne Rudder Baker have brought to the forefront of discussion the related, but often neglected, issue of our essence: “What are we, most fundamentally (essentially)—human animals, persons, or something else?” -/- Attacking what he calls the (...) Standard View of personal identity, according to which personal identity consists in some type of psychological continuity, Olson contends that this thesis has highly implausible implications. Attributing the claim that we are essentially persons to the Standard View, Olson defends the alterna- tive thesis that we are essentially (living) human animals, members of the species Homo sapiens, and that our persistence conditions are biological, having nothing to do with psychology. At the heart of his critique is the contention that the Standard View lacks a plausible account of the relationship between a person and the human animal associated with her. Defending “person essentialism” and defining persons as beings with first-person perspectives, Lynne Rudder Baker responds to Olson’s challenge with the Constitution View: We (human) persons are constituted by, but not identical to, human animals. -/- After reconstructing Olson’s critique of the Standard View, I argue that Baker goes a long way toward meeting his challenge to account plausibly for the relationship between persons and human animals. Then I contend that her person-based Constitution View nevertheless has major difficulties: a “newborn problem”; a dubious ontology; and a problematic account of personal identity. I conclude with general reflections about this dialectic. (shrink)

Bioethicists function in an environment in which their peers - healthcare executives, lawyers, nurses, physicians - assert the integrity of their fields through codes of professional ethics. Is it time for bioethics to assert its integrity by developing a code of ethics? Answering in the affirmative, this paper lays out a case by reviewing the historical nature and function of professional codes of ethics. Arguing that professional codes are aggregative enterprises growing in response to a field's historical experiences, it asserts (...) that bioethics now needs to assert its integrity and independence and has already developed a body of formal statements that could be aggregated to create a comprehensive code of ethics for bioethics. A Draft Model Aggregated Code of Ethics for Bioethicists is offered in the hope that analysis and criticism of this draft code will promote further discussion of the nature and content of a code of ethics for bioethicists. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: There are some problems with Lynne Baker’s constitution account of personal identity that become evident when we consider brain transplant thought experiments and two kinds of rare cases of conjoined twins — the first appears to be one organism but two persons and the second seems to involve two organisms associated with one person. To handle the problems arising from brain transplants, the constitution theorist must admit an additional level of constitution between the organism and the person. To (...) resolve the problems posed by the two kinds of conjoined twins, the constitution theorist must accept that constitution is not always a one-to-one relationship. RESUME: La théorie constitutionnelle de l’identité personnelle de Lynne Baker soulève certains problèmes qui deviennent évidents lorsque l’on considère des expériences de pensée sur des transplantations de cerveaux et deux genres de cas rares de jumeaux conjoints — du premier cas paraît s’ensuivre qu’il y a deux personnes pour un seul organisme alors que du deuxième découle qu’une seule personne existe dans deux organismes. Afin d’expliquer les problèmes qui surviennent avec les transplantations de cerveaux, le théoricien de la constitution doit admettre un niveau de constitution intermédiaire entre l’organisme et la personne. Pour résoudre les problèmes que posent les cas de jumeaux conjoints, le théoricien de la constitution doit accepter que la relation de constitution ne se réalise pas toujours entre deux termes. (shrink)

Criticized as a nostalgic anachronism by those who oppose her version of political theory and lauded as symbol of direct democratic participation by those who favor it, the Athenian polis features prominently in Hannah Arendt's account of politics. This essay traces the origin and development of Arendt's conception of the polis as a space of appearance from the early 1950s onward. It makes particular use of the Denktagebuch, Arendt's intellectual diary, in order to shed new light on the historicity of (...) one of her central concepts. The article contends that both critics and partisans of Arendt's use of the polis have made the same mistake: they have presumed that the polis represents a space of face-to-face immediacy. In fact, Arendt compared the polis to a series of analogues, many of which are not centered on direct exchanges between political actors and spectators. As a result, Arendt's early work on the polis turns out to anticipate many of the concerns of her later work on judgment, and her theory of the polis becomes a theory of topics. (shrink)

Drawing on work of the past decade, this volume brings together articles from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science, and many other branches of the biological sciences. The volume delves into the latest theoretical controversies as well as burning questions of contemporary social importance. The issues considered include the nature of evolutionary theory, biology and ethics, the challenge from religion, and the social implications of biology today (in particular the Human Genome Project).

Compares classic and contemporary theories of genetics and evolution and explores the role of teleological thought in biology.

“Hildebrand has constructed a well-paced and historically informative evaluation of neopragmatism. . . . This book makes an excellent companion for courses in both contemporary epistemology and American philosophy.” –Choice How faithful are the Neopragmatists' reformulations of Classical Pragmatism? Can their Neopragmatisms work? In examining the difficulties in Neopragmatism, David L. Hildebrand is able to propose some distinct directions for Pragmatism.

Individuals with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) display diverse deficits in social, cognitive and behavioral functioning. To date, there has been mixed findings on the profile of executive function deficits for high-functioning adults (IQ >70) with ASD. A conceptual distinction is commonly made between “cold” and “hot” executive functions. Cold executive functions refer to mechanistic higher-order cognitive operations (e.g., working memory), whereas hot executive functions entail cognitive abilities supported by emotional awareness and social perception (e.g., social cognition). This study aimed to (...) determine the independence of deficits in hot and cold executive functions for high-functioning adults with ASD. Forty-two adults with ASD (64% male, aged 18-66 years) and 40 age and gender matched controls were administered The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT; emotion recognition and social inference), Letter Number Sequencing (working memory) and Hayling Sentence Completion Test (response initiation and suppression). Between-group analyses identified that the ASD group performed significantly worse than matched controls on all measures of cold and hot executive functions (d =.54-1.5). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that the ASD sample performed more poorly on emotion recognition and social inference tasks than matched controls after controlling for cold executive functions and employment status. The findings also indicated that the ability to recognise emotions and make social inferences was supported by working memory and response initiation and suppression processes. Overall, this study supports the distinction between hot and cold executive function impairments for adults with ASD. Moreover, it advances understanding of higher-order impairments underlying social interaction difficulties for this population which, in turn, may assist with diagnosis and inform intervention programs. (shrink)

In a recent paper, William K. Goosens objects to the arguments I set out some time ago attacking the logical empiricist analysis of reduction as applied to genetics. In these works I did not argue against the claim that Mendelian genetics was being reduced to molecular biology. Nor did I conclude, as Goosens asserts, that in the case of genetics, “reduction is insignificant”. To the contrary, I repeatedly stated that, “given our pre-analytic intuitions about reduction,” the reduction of Mendelian to (...) molecular genetics “is a case of reduction, a paradigm case”. And in agreement with Kenneth Schaffner I argued that reduction “in some very important, pre-analytic sense has taken place and is taking place in genetics”. The target of my objections to reduction in genetics was not “reduction” in some pre-analytic sense. Nor was it the various explications which have appeared since. Rather it was the notion of theory reduction set out a generation ago by such logical empiricists as Ernest Nagel, The particular version of this analysis which I chose to attack was that presented by Schaffner ; for Schaffner's later views, see his. I chose Schaffner's explication to attack because I thought it was the best of its kind and because it was the only defense of the logical empiricist analysis at the time which used genetics as one of its chief examples. Contrary to Goosens' assumption, in criticizing Schaffner's explication, I did not thereby “endorse” it. (shrink)

Authors frequently refer to gene-based selection in biological evolution, the reaction of the immune system to antigens, and operant learning as exemplifying selection processes in the same sense of this term. However, as obvious as this claim may seem on the surface, setting out an account of “selection” that is general enough to incorporate all three of these processes without becoming so general as to be vacuous is far from easy. In this target article, we set out such a general (...) account of selection to see how well it accommodates these very different sorts of selection. The three fundamental elements of this account are replication, variation, and environmental interaction. For selection to occur, these three processes must be related in a very specific way. In particular, replication must alternate with environmental interaction so that any changes that occur in replication are passed on differentially because of environmental interaction. One of the main differences among the three sorts of selection that we investigate concerns the role of organisms. In traditional biological evolution, organisms play a central role with respect to environmental interaction. Although environmental interaction can occur at other levels of the organizational hierarchy, organisms are the primary focus of environmental interaction. In the functioning of the immune system, organisms function as containers. The interactions that result in selection of antibodies during a lifetime are between entities (antibodies and antigens) contained within the organism. Resulting changes in the immune system of one organism are not passed on to later organisms. Nor are changes in operant behavior resulting from behavioral selection passed on to later organisms. But operant behavior is not contained in the organism because most of the interactions that lead to differential replication include parts of the world outside the organism. Changes in the organism's nervous system are the effects of those interactions. The role of genes also varies in these three systems. Biological evolution is gene-based (i.e., genes are the primary replicators). Genes play very different roles in operant behavior and the immune system. However, in all three systems, iteration is central. All three selection processes are also incredibly wasteful and inefficient. They can generate complexity and novelty primarily because they are so wasteful and inefficient. Key Words: evolution; immunology; interaction; operant behavior; operant learning; replication; selection; variation. (shrink)

Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vico's oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vico's significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions. Marshall presents Vico's work as an effort to resolve a contradiction. As a professor of rhetoric at (...) the University of Naples, Vico had a deep investment in the explanatory power of classical rhetorical thought, especially that of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Yet as a historian of the failure of Naples as a self-determining political community, he had no illusions about the possibility or worth of democratic and republican systems of government in the post-classical world. As Marshall demonstrates, by jettisoning the assumption that rhetoric only illuminates direct, face-to-face interactions between orator and auditor, Vico reinvented rhetoric for a modern world in which the Greek polis and the Roman res publica are no longer paradigmatic for political thought. (shrink)

One of Aristotle's logic treatises, this text is published in the Oxford Classical Text series.

An examination of Helga Kuhse, Caring: Nurses, Women and Ethics (1997).

Extreme variation in the meaning of the term “species” throughout the history of biology has often frustrated attempts of historians, philosophers and biologists to communicate with one another about the transition in biological thinking from the static species concept to the modern notion of evolving species. The most important change which has underlain all the other fluctuations in the meaning of the word “species” is the change from it denoting such metaphysical entities as essences, Forms or Natures to denoting classes (...) of individual organisms. Several authors have taken notice of the role of metaphysics in the work of particular biologists. An attempt will be made in this paper to present a systematic investigation of the role which metaphysics has played in the work of representative biologists throughout the history of biology, especially as it relates to their species concepts. (shrink)

Karl Popper has been one of the few philosophers of sciences who has influenced scientists. I evaluate Popper's influence on our understanding of evolutionary theory from his earliest publications to the present. Popper concluded that three sorts of statements in evolutionary biology are not genuine laws of nature. I take him to be right on this score. Popper's later distinction between evolutionary theory as a metaphysical research program and as a scientific theory led more than one scientist to misunderstand his (...) position on evolutionary theory as a scientific theory. In his later work Popper also introduced what he took to be improvements of evolutionary theory. Thus far these improvements have had almost no influence on evolutionary biology. I conclude by examining the influence of Popper on the reception of cladistic analysis. (shrink)

In this study the author argues that public relations practitioners must not ignore the public interest even though the term has been the subject of vigorous debate within both academic and professional circles. The author maintains - not-withstanding the controversy - that the public interest is intrinsic to the very definition of what it is public relations people do. He suggests the solution to the definitional problem rests in first formulating an abstract (general) definition, then moving to the operational level.

Dynamical systems play a central role in explanations in cognitive neuroscience. The grounds for these explanations are hotly debated and generally fall under two approaches: non-mechanistic and mechanistic. In this paper, I first outline a neurodynamical explanatory schema that highlights the role of dynamical systems in cognitive phenomena. I next explore the mechanistic status of such neurodynamical explanations. I argue that these explanations satisfy only some of the constraints on mechanistic explanation and should be considered pseudomechanistic explanations. I defend this (...) argument against three alternative interpretations of the neurodynamical explanatory schema. The independent interpretation holds that neurodynamical explanations and mechanisms are independent. The constitutive interpretation holds that neurodynamical explanations are constitutive but otherwise non-mechanistic. Both the independent and constitutive interpretations fail to account for all the features of neurodynamical explanations. The partial interpretation assumes that the targets of dynamical systems models are mechanisms and so holds that neurodynamical explanations are incomplete because they lack mechanistic details. I contend instead that the targets of those models are dynamical systems distinct from mechanisms and defend this claim against several objections. I conclude with a defense of the pseudomechanistic interpretation and a discussion of the source of their explanatory power in relation to a causal-mechanical description of the world. (shrink)

Each new decade brings ‘advances’ in technology that are more capable of collecting, aggregating, organizing, and deploying data about human practices. Where we go, what we buy, what we say online, and the people with whom we connect, are captured with ever more sophistication by governmental and corporate institutions. Data are increasingly being sold to schools to help them ‘manage’ teaching and administration tasks. Of course, at the same time, schools, teachers, and students are generating data that further advances the (...) goals of data aggregators. After some discussion regarding data’s philosophical dimensions, this chapter examines the benefits and drawbacks of surveillance and datafication in present educational contexts. In addition, this chapter raises ethical and pragmatic questions related to how datafication often reshapes or redefines agency, choice, personal relationships, and individuality. In response to some of the ethical qualms raised by these questions, a vision (imaginary) is proposed to help conserve some of the educational values threatened by datafication, including values related to genuine interest, sociality, and transformative, and qualitative experiences. -/- CITATION: Hildebrand, D.L. (2024). What are Data and Who Benefits?. In: Buch, A., Lindberg, Y., Cerratto Pargman, T. (eds) Framing Futures in Postdigital Education. Postdigital Science and Education . Springer, Cham. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-58622-4_5 -/- . (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscientists are turning to an increasingly rich array of neurodynamical systems to explain mental phenomena. In these explanations, cognitive capacities are decomposed into a set of functions, each of which is described mathematically, and then these descriptions are mapped on to corresponding mathematical descriptions of the dynamics of neural systems. In this paper, I outline a novel explanatory schema based on these explanations. I then argue that these explanations present a novel type of dynamicism for the philosophy of mind (...) and neuroscience, componential dynamicism, that focuses on the parts of cognitive systems that fill certain functional roles in producing cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

The goal of cladistic systematics is to discern sister-group relations (cladistic relations) by the methods of cladistic analysis and to represent them explicitly and unambiguously in cladograms and cladistic classifications. Cladists have selected cladistic relations to represent for two reasons: cladistic relations can be discerned with reasonable certainty by the methods of cladistic analysis and they can be represented with relative ease in cladograms and classifications. Cladists argue that features of phylogeny other than cladistic relations cannot be discerned with sufficient (...) certainty to warrant attempting to represent them in either cladograms or classifications and could not be represented if they could. I argue that a better alternative is to work toward improving methods of cladistic analysis (or else to supplement them with other methods) so that such features of phylogeny can be discerned and to devise methods of representation capable of representing them in both cladograms and classifications. However, cladograms and classifications cannot represent everything about phylogeny. It is better to represent one or two aspects of phylogeny explicitly and unambiguously than nothing at all. (shrink)

This book is a discussion of the nature and import of Richard Rorty's philosophy, particularly as it relates to his reevaluation of American pragmatism.

Methodological and philosophical foundations in the anthropology of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead.

A central subject is the main strand around which the fabric of an historical narrative is woven. Such a subject must possess both spatial and temporal continuity. It is integrated into an historical entity through the relationship between those properties which make it an individual, and their interaction with the historical event. Scientific theory is useful in the reconstruction of past events and the definition of the central subject. Ideas used as central subjects present the problem of finding internal principles (...) of integration which will make the idea continuous over time. The purpose of narratives is to explain an event by integrating it into an organized whole. (shrink)

Philosophers have distinguished a metaphysical category which they term "historical entities" or "continuants". Such particulars are spatiotemporally localized and develop continuously through time while retaining internal cohesiveness. Species, social groups and conceptual systems can be profitably treated as historical entities. No damage is done to preanalytic intuitions in treating social groups as historical entities; both biological species and conceptual systems can be construed as historical entities only by modifying the ordinary way of viewing both. However, if species and conceptual systems (...) are to "evolve", then they must be treated as historical entities. The type specimen method, which is used by systematists to individuate and name biological taxa, is set out and then extended to apply to scientific communities as social groups and conceptual systems. (shrink)

After summarizing my own views of 'I' and the first-person perspective, I consider a well-known autistic, Temple Grandin, who claims that she thinks only in pictures, not in language. I argue, to the contrary, that Grandin's mental life as she describes it in fact requires language, which, as a writer, she undoubtedly has. Finally, I turn to the question of whether thought as Temple Grandin describes it is independent of language.