The “binding problem” has been a central question in vision science for some 30 years: When encoding multiple objects or maintaining them in working memory, how are we able to represent the correspondence between a specific feature and its corresponding object correctly? In this letter we argue that the boundaries of this research program in fact extend far beyond vision, and we call for coordinated pursuit across the broader cognitive science community of this central question for cognition, which we dub (...) “Binding Problem 2.0”. (shrink)

Modern society is characterised by rapid technological development that is often socially controversial and plagued by extensive scientific uncertainty concerning its socio-ecological impacts. Within this context, the concept of ‘responsible research and innovation’ is currently rising to prominence in international discourse concerning science and technology governance. As this emerging concept of RRI begins to be enacted through instruments, approaches, and initiatives, it is valuable to explore what it is coming to mean for and in practice. In this paper we draw (...) attention to a realm that is often backgrounded in the current discussions of RRI but which has a highly significant impact on scientific research, innovation and policy—namely, the interstitial space of international standardization. Drawing on the case of nanoscale sciences and technologies to make our argument, we present examples of how international standards are already entangled in the development of RRI and yet, how the process of international standardization itself largely fails to embody the norms proposed as characterizing RRI. We suggest that although current models for RRI provide a promising attempt to make research and innovation more responsive to societal needs, ethical values and environmental challenges, such approaches will need to encompass and address a greater diversity of innovation system agents and spaces if they are to prove successful in their aims. (shrink)

This paper challenges contemporary portrayals in the nursing literature of the spaces within which care of patients in hospital settings is conducted. Within the wider discourse of fiscal restraint on health care spending, professional nursing has cast its disciplined eyes on details of the nurse‐patient relationship for the ostensible purpose of repairing that which is treated as individual failings of nurses to practise in ways prescribed by nursing theories. Set aside in this approach to the so‐called ‘problems’ of nursing practice (...) has been an examination of the conditions within which nurses come in contact with patients, and a critical recognition that such contacts represent skilled accomplishments of social action. In this paper, these conditions are treated as resources available to both nurses and patients to generate accounts for the nurse's presence as well as the nurse's absence. Examples from an ethnographic study of nursing practice are used to illustrate how the spaces operating between nurses and patients are not empty voids but aresocialspaces through which particular meanings about nursing care can be conveyed. (shrink)

We have long used mechanical devices to compensate for physical disability. Soon, however, it may be possible to augment mental capacity—to add memory or upgrade processing power. We should ponder the enormous moral implications of the machine‐assisted mind now, before it is accomplished.

Research on the cognitive consequences of bilingualism typically proceeds by labeling participants as “monolingual” or “bilingual” and comparing performance on some measures across these groups. It is well-known that this approach has led to inconsistent results. However, the approach assumes that there are clear criteria to designate individuals as monolingual or bilingual, and more fundamentally, to determine whether a communication system counts as a unique language. Both of these assumptions may not be correct. The problem is particularly acute when participants (...) are asked to classify themselves or simply report how many languages they speak. Participants' responses to these questions are shaped by their personal perceptions of the criteria for making these judgments. This study investigated the perceptions underlying judgments of bilingualism by asking 528 participants to judge the extent to which a description of a fictional linguistic system constitutes a unique language and the extent to which a description of a fictional individual's linguistic competence qualifies that person as bilingual. The results show a range of responses for both concepts, indicating substantial ambiguity for these terms. Moreover, participants were asked to self-classify as monolingual or bilingual, and these decisions were not related to more objective information regarding the degree of bilingual experience obtained from a detailed questionnaire. These results are consistent with the notion that bilingualism is not categorical and that specific language experiences are important in determining the criteria for being bilingual. The results impact interpretations of research investigating group differences on the cognitive effects of bilingualism. (shrink)

Academics from diverse disciplines are recognizing not only the procedural ethical issues involved in research, but also the complexity of everyday “micro” ethical issues that arise. While ethical guidelines are being developed for research in aboriginal populations and low-and-middle-income countries, multi-partnered research initiatives examining arts-based interventions to promote social change pose a unique set of ethical dilemmas not yet fully explored. Our research team, comprising health, education, and social scientists, critical theorists, artists and community-activists launched a five-year research partnership on (...) arts-for-social change. Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in Canada and based in six universities, including over 40 community-based collaborators, and informed by five main field projects, we set out to synthesize existing knowledge and lessons we learned. We summarized these learnings into 12 key points for reflection, grouped into three categories: community-university partnership concerns, dilemmas related to the arts, and team issues. In addition to addressing previous concerns outlined in the literature, we identified power dynamics hindering meaningful participation of community partners and university-based teams that need to be addressed within a reflective critical framework of ethical practice. We present how our team has been addressing these issues, as examples of how such concerns could be approached in community-university partnerships in arts for social change. (shrink)

影響全球的COVID-19已經進入第三年，在疫情時代或後疫情時代的種種爭論中，相關的倫理考量依然是學界關注的議題。本期的論文涉及具體的醫學倫理學問題，包括香港抗疫倫理焦點、ECMO的使用、疫情防控中的 道德兩難、現代科技大數據所引發的對個人隱私的焦慮、疫情處境中的善終和臨終關懷、審視傳統中醫學有關疫情控制的歷史研究、傳統墨家思想對現當下防疫管理的啟示作用。本期的論文的研究方法各有不同，包括哲學的、倫 理學的、實證的、歷史的、及比較的，其宗旨是引發人們對這些問題的反思和探討。.

ANGUS J, HODNETT E and O’BRIEN-PALLAS L. Nursing Inquiry 2003; 10: 218–228Implementing evidence-based nursing practice: a tale of two intrapartum nursing unitsDespite concerns that the rise of evidence-based practice threatens to transform nursing practice into a performative exercise disciplined by scientific knowledge, others have found that scientific knowledge is by no means the preeminent source of knowledge within the dynamic settings of health-care. We argue that the contexts within which evidence-based innovations are implemented are as influential in the outcomes as (...) the individual practitioners who attempt these changes. A focused ethnography was done in follow-up to an earlier trial that evaluated the effectiveness of a marketing strategy to encourage the adoption of evidence-based intrapartum nursing practice. Bourdieu's (1990, 1991) concepts of habitus, capital and social field were used in our refinement of the analysis of the ethnographic findings. Nursing leadership, interprofessional struggle with physicians, the characteristics of the community and the physical environment were prominent issues at all of the sites. Detailed descriptions of the sociohistorical context and of the experiences at two sites are presented to illustrate the complexities encountered when implementing innovations. (shrink)

Intense ethnic, racial, and religious violence led many to classify South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Israel/palestine as intractable conflicts. Yet they diverged, with only South Africa achieving a lasting settlement. The authors explain why. The authors analyze them as a distinctive type of negotiated transition. The ancién regime is an imperfect democracy, subject to electoral constraints and legitimated by democratic principles that it violates. This constrains negotiations but helps manage difficult commitment problems. The authors show how the principals navigated constraints (...) and took advantage of opportunities in South Africa but have failed—so far—to do so in the other two conflicts. (shrink)

Discipline and passion: meaning, masochism and mythology in popular medical romancesThis paper is an interpretive analysis of the discourses within popular romance literature, with a particular focus on the genre that includes constructions of the images of nurses and nursing. An historical contrast is made along with examinations of the uses and meanings encompassed within this body of literature, and its messages for women as nurses as it reflectdcreates societal change. Deviations from the formulaic nature of these works are explored. (...) Discipline and passion are the recurring themes evident throughout in juxtapositions of romance and power differentials in the hospital/medical scene. The soft‐core, sado‐masochistic images evident in many titles are explored in a way that raises questions about sexuality, romance, nursing mythology, and the future of this sub‐genre of the popular romance. (shrink)

This article is a longitudinal analysis of the relation between gendered labour divisions and new data processing technologies at the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics. Following social-constructivist and evolutionary economic approaches, the authors hold that the relation between technology and work organization is a two-way process. This means that technology does not only affect the relations between men and women at work, but that these relations also influence technological choices. The proportional numbers of men and women on the labour market (...) and changing conceptions of which work is deemed appropriate for women have been important factors in the strongly varying extent to which women participated in office work. They have also been important factors in determining the course of technological development. Shortages of women on the labour market have even determined search heuristics for new technological solutions in specific directions. (shrink)

Under the Canadian labour laws that govern workplace safety, wage, and other work conditions, ‘family’ workers are not covered by the law under special rules for agriculture. Among other legal exclusions, the family farm exclusion contributes to a dearth of basic work, health, and safety standards in the sector, despite the commercialization and industrialization of family farming activities. Through a focus on Alberta, Canada—where farm labour rules have only applied to agriculture since 2016—this article explores the family exclusion in relation (...) to family farming experiences with work and risk, based on interviews with farm operators, their family members, and farm employees in Alberta. While some participants continued to press for exemptions for farms from labour rules under the rationale that there is intrinsic safety within families, the findings also reveal how other participants have begun questioning this rationale, despite their overall support for the family farm exemption in Alberta. Using the lens of legal geography and critical perspectives on the family, we argue that the family is a significant but under-examined dynamic in the legal regimes governing farm labour and agricultural safety and health. Together, the law and dominant narratives about family farming treat farm operations as hyper-private domains, where operators have disproportionate power to dispose of their own work and the work of others how they wish. These legal geographies of hyper-privacy contribute to the indecent work conditions that characterize farm labour systems in Alberta and other jurisdictions. (shrink)

Cancer rates in men and women of reproductive age have continued to increase in recent years; however, therapy has dramatically decreased the mortality rates. Since 1990, the prevalence of cancer survivors in young adults increased from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 250 patients due to more aggressive therapies. Current therapies may have profound toxic effects on gamete function with infertility as an expected consequence of cancer therapy. Depending on the site and stage of cancer, age of the patient, and (...) the type of treatment, approximately 90% of men and women diagnosed with cancer may be at risk of permanent infertility.Fertility preservation has emerged as a discipline dedicated to improving the future reproductive potential of cancer survivors. Significant progress in the advancement of fertility preservation therapies and a heightened awareness of the availability of therapies has occurred in the past 10 years. The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Society of Reproductive Medicine have advanced these efforts by formally recognizing the importance of fertility awareness. (shrink)

Most readers of Louis Althusser first enter his work through his writings on ideology. In an important new essay Étienne Balibar, friend and colleague of Althusser, offers an original reading of Althusser’s idea of ideology, drawing on both recently published posthumous writing and Althusser's work on the Piccolo Teatro di Milano. Balibar’s essay uncovers the intricate workings of interpellation through Althusser’s essays on the theater. If debates on dialectical materialism belong to a distant history, Balibar suggests, the question of ideology (...) remains crucial for thinking the present. The issue includes commentaries on Balibar’s essay from five influential scholars who engage critically with Althusser’s philosophy: Judith Butler, Banu Bargu, Adi Ophir, Warren Montag, and Bruce Robbins. This issue reanimates Althusser’s concept of ideology as an analytic tool for contemporary cultural and political critique. (shrink)

For a little more than a decade, professional organizations and healthcare institutions have attempted to develop guidelines and policies to deal with seemingly intractable conflicts that arise between clinicians and patients over appropriate use of aggressive life-sustaining therapies in the face of low expectations of medical benefit. This article suggests that, although such efforts at conflict resolution are commendable on many levels, inadequate attention has been given to their potential negative effects upon particular groups of patients/proxies. Based on the well-documented (...) tendency among many African Americans to prefer more aggressive end-of-life medical interventions, it is proposed that the use of institutional policy to break decision making impasse in cases for which aggressive treatment is deemed “medically inappropriate” will fall disproportionately on that group. Finally, it is suggested that the development and application of institutional conflict-resolution policies should be evaluated in the context of historical and current experiences of marginalization and disempowerment, lest such policies exacerbate that experience. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study of the conception of emotions in premodern, or more specifically, pre-Han Chinese philosophical traditions, ranging from the early-5th to the late-3rd centuries BCE. This era is known as the "Warring States period" in China and marked by the flourishing of a number of different schools of philosophers who advocated their visions of how society should be run. The author looks at wide-ranging views about the nature of emotions and their proper role in moral life (...) espoused by representative thinkers of the time. The approach taken by the author is based on a premise that what constitutes emotions as phenomena in the world is of primary importance to questions concerning the... (shrink)

Ellen Meiksins Wood is a leading contemporary political theorist who has elaborated an innovative approach to the history of political thought, the social history of political theory .

We are often uncertain how to behave morally in complex situations. In this controversial study, Ted Lockhart contends that moral philosophy has failed to address how we make such moral decisions. Adapting decision theory to the task of decision-making under moral uncertainly, he proposes that we should not always act how we feel we ought to act, and that sometimes we should act against what we feel to be morally right. Lockhart also discusses abortion extensively and proposes new (...) ways to deal with the ethical and moral issues which surround it. (shrink)

Aristotelian naturalism (AN) holds that the norms governing the human will are special instances of a broader type of normativity that is also found in other living things: natural goodness and natural defect. Both critics and defenders of AN have tended to focus on the thorny issues that are specific to human beings. But some philosophers claim that AN faces other difficulties, arguing that its broader conception of natural normativity is incompatible with current biological science. This paper has three aims. (...) First, we consider a distinctive and nuanced critique of AN’s general understanding of natural normativity put forward by Tim Lewens. Second, after giving a defense of AN, we explore and evaluate Lewens’ proposed alternative view—Kantian projectivism about life forms. We present a problem for Kantian projectivism and suggest reasons for thinking that AN is, after all, the superior position. Finally, we clarify and explain how AN’s claims about life forms and our knowledge of them, relate to empirical observation and to contemporary biological science. (shrink)

The traditional understanding of Kant and Kierkegaard is that their views on the good will and inwardness, respectively, commit them to denying moral luck in an attempt to isolate an omnipotent moral subject from involvement with the external world. This leaves them vulnerable to the criticism that their ethical thought unrealistically insulates morality from anything that happens in the world. On the interpretation offered here, inwardness and the good will are not contrasted with worldly happenings, but are instead a matter (...) of worldly happenings that exhibit a particular temporal structure. Kant and Kierkegaard should not be understood as denying moral luck. (shrink)

According to the Explanatory Problem with Frege's Platonism about Thoughts, the sharp separation between the psychological and the logical on which Frege famously insists is too sharp, leaving Frege no resources to show how it could be legitimate to invoke logical laws in an explanation of our activities of thinking. I argue that there is room in Frege's philosophy for such justificatory explanations. To see how, we need first to understand correctly the lesson of Frege's attack on psychologism as fundamentally (...) marking a contrast between justification and explanation, and, second, we must take Frege to be committed to the idea that the laws of truth are normatively constitutive for the process of thinking. (shrink)

Constitutivism holds that an account of what a thing is yields those normative standards to which that thing is by nature subject. We articulate a minimal form of constitutivism that we call _formal, non-epistemological constitutivism_ which diverges from orthodox versions of constitutivism in two main respects. First: whereas orthodox versions of constitutivism hold that those ethical norms to which people are by nature subject are sui generis because of their special capacity to motivate action and legitimate criticism, we argue that (...) these features are compatible with treating these norms as of a piece with those ‘formal’ natural-historical norms which can be used to assess living things. Second: unlike orthodox versions of constitutivism, our version does not seek to use a non-normative account of that kind of being which we are as a means of identifying those normative claims to which we are are by nature subject. We then indicate how our position can afford us the resources to address some of the familiar difficulties that face cognitivism in ethics. (shrink)

Ellen Goodman uses extensive extracts from original writings to highlight the main themes of the Western legal tradition.The strength of the book is its clear ...

Traditional Chinese culture, Confucianism, in particular, has a non-individualist conception of what it is to be human. It conceives of people fundamentally as members of social groups—specifically, the family, the clan, the political community and the state—not as atomic individuals as perceived in modern society. The communist ideology since the middle of the last century also emphasizes the significance of ‘the common good’ of the state which describes a specific ‘good’ that is shared and beneficial for all (or most) members (...) of a given community. Nevertheless, marketization and decentralization in China today have significantly challenged the notion of a state-oriented community that directly impacts China's healthcare system, beginning with the dismantling of the rural collectives and state-owned enterprises as part of the reform and opening process. This article will address healthcare challenges in China today, examining the conceptual/ethical issues raised by public healthcare, and contending that public health concerns should go beyond the dichotomy between individualism and collectivism. The article will argue that the family-oriented model of Confucianism offers an alternative way to look at what constitute a community and common goods. The Confucian approach to ethics is relevant to healthcare today. For example, it will be much easier to find a shared idea of common good in terms of complicated issues like healthcare; it would make sense to give a larger role to families via family savings accounts, and not have everything determined by the government. (shrink)

Context: Although ethics consultation is commonplace in United States (U.S.) hospitals, descriptive data about this health service are lacking. Objective: To describe the prevalence, practitioners, and processes of ethics consultation in U.S. hospitals. Design: A 56-item phone or questionnaire survey of the "best informant" within each hospital. Participants: Random sample of 600 U.S. general hospitals, stratified by bed size. Results: The response rate was 87.4%. Ethics consultation services (ECSs) were found in 81% of all general hospitals in the U.S., and (...) in 100% of hospitals with more than 400 beds. The median number of consults performed by ECSs in the year prior to survey was 3. Most individuals performing ethics consultation were physicians (34%), nurses (31%), social workers (11%), or chaplains (10%). Only 41% had formal supervised training in ethics consultation. Consultation practices varied widely both within and between ECSs. For example, 65% of ECSs always made recommendations, whereas 6% never did. These findings highlight a need to clarify standards for ethics consultation practices. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 30 According to epistemological disjunctivism I can claim to know facts about the world around me on the basis of my perceptual experience. My possession of such knowledge is incompatible with a number of familiar skeptical scenarios. So a paradigmatic epistemological disjunctivist perceptual experience should allow me to rule out such incompatible skeptical scenarios. In this paper, I consider skeptical scenarios which both cast doubt on my conviction that I can trust my purported perceptual experiences and (...) appear to be compatible with my enjoying a veridical perceptual experience of my environment. Such skeptical scenarios draw attention to a significant difference between McDowell’s epistemological disjunctivism and Pritchard’s. McDowellian epistemological disjunctivism has the resources to rule out such skeptical scenarios but Pritchard’s does not. This is because the Pritchardian epistemological disjunctivist does not, unlike McDowell, insist on the idea that perception is a fallible capacity, self-consciously exercised and possessed, for knowledge. (shrink)

Bai, Tongdong 白彤東, New Mission of an Old State: Classical Confucian Political Philosophy in a Contemporary and Comparative Context 舊邦新命: 古今中西參考下的古典儒家政治哲學 Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11712-010-9183-0 Authors Ellen Y. Zhang, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong Journal Dao Online ISSN 1569-7274 Print ISSN 1540-3009 Journal Volume Volume 9 Journal Issue Volume 9, Number 4.

won a shopping spree on her birthday, but the 99-year-old Californian wanted nothing for herself. Instead, she used the opportunity to make well-stuffed holiday stockings for children in need, which she plans to distribute through her church. “I’m going to cry, I’m so happy,” she said last week as she filled her cart with toys and candy, along with essentials like toothbrushes and socks, at a 99-cent store in Beverly Hills. “I feel bad that I can’t do it for every (...) [poor child],” Goldstein said. “But it makes me feel very good that I am able to do what I can.”. (shrink)

A 1999–2000 national study of U.S. hospitals raised concerns about ethics consultation (EC) practices and catalyzed improvement efforts. To assess how practices have changed since 2000, we administered a 105-item survey to “best informants” in a stratified random sample of 600 U.S. general hospitals. This primary article details the methods for the entire study, then focuses on the 16 items from the prior study. Compared with 2000, the estimated number of case consultations performed annually rose by 94% to 68,000. The (...) median number of consults per hospital was unchanged at 3, but more than doubled for hospitals with 400+ beds. The level of education of EC practitioners was unchanged, while the percentage of hospitals formally evaluating their ECS decreased from 28.0% to 19.1%. The gap between large, teaching hospitals and small, nonteaching hospitals widened since the prior study. We suggest targeting future improvement efforts to hospitals where needs are not being met by current approaches to EC. (shrink)

When reflecting on the nature of skilled action, it is easy to fall into familiar dichotomies such that one construes the flexibility and intelligence of skill at the level of intentional states while characterizing the automatic motor processes that constitute motor skill execution as learned but fixed, invariant, bottom-up, brute-causal responses. In this essay, I will argue that this picture of skilled, automatic, motor processes is overly simplistic. Specifically, I will argue that an adequate account of the learned motor routines (...) that constitute embodied skills cannot be given in a purely bottom-up, brute-causal fashion. Rather, motor control is intelligent all the way down. To establish this, I will first review two recent accounts of skill, Stanley and Krakauer and Papineau, which characterize the automatic motor control responsible for the fine-grained movements constitutive of motor skill as brute, low-level phenomena. I will then isolate five key features that should apply to skilled motor control, if these accounts are correct. Together, the accounts posit that motor control is: ballistic, invariant, independent of general action trajectories, Insensitive to semantic content, and independent of personal-level intentions. In the final section of this paper, I will appeal to optimal control theory for empirical evidence to challenge the commitment to skilled action as qualified by the above features. (shrink)

This paper has two sections. In the first, I shall deal with the parts of the ontological principle; in the second, with the question of whether to accept or reject its third part.