Empirical psychology documents widespread evidence of bias in the ways that people select, interpret, and selectively interpret evidence in forming and revising their beliefs. These biases can function to create and perpetuate epistemologies of ignorance. I argue that virtue epistemology can help us explain what goes epistemically wrong in these cases, and can offer positive advice, orienting us toward ways to right it. In particular, I defend the virtue approach from epistemic situationist worries about the empirical plausibility of individual agents' (...) ability to develop corrective virtues. I argue that situational virtues are genuine responsibilist virtues, and are one of the tools at our disposal for overcoming epistemologies of ignorance. (shrink)

Relational quantum mechanics (RQM) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics based on the idea that quantum states do not describe an absolute property of a system but rather a relationship between systems. There have recently been some criticisms of RQM pertaining to issues around intersubjectivity. In this article, we show how RQM can address these criticisms by adding a new postulate which requires that all of the information possessed by a certain observer is stored in physical variables of that observer (...) and thus is accessible by measurement to other observers. This makes it possible for observers to reach intersubjective agreement about quantum events that have occurred in the past. We suggest a possible ontology for a version of RQM employing this postulate; this ontology upholds the principle that quantum states are always relational, but it also postulates a set of quantum events that are not strictly relational. We show that the new postulate helps address the preferred basis problem in RQM. (shrink)

Recently there have emerged an assortment of theorems relating to the ‘absoluteness of emerged events,’ and these results have sometimes been used to argue that quantum mechanics may involve some kind of metaphysically radical non-absoluteness, such as relationalism or perspectivalism. However, in our view a close examination of these theorems fails to convincingly support such possibilities. In this paper we argue that the Wigner’s friend paradox, the theorem of Bong et al and the theorem of Lawrence et al are all (...) best understood as demonstrating that if quantum mechanics is universal, and if certain auxiliary assumptions hold, then the world inevitably includes various forms of ‘disaccord,’ but this need not be interpreted in a metaphysically radical way; meanwhile, the theorem of Ormrod and Barrett is best understood either as an argument for an interpretation allowing multiple outcomes per observer, such as the Everett approach, or as a proof that quantum mechanics cannot be universal in the sense relevant for this theorem. We also argue that these theorems taken together suggest interesting possibilities for a different kind of relational approach in which _interaction_ states are relativized whilst observed events are absolute, and we show that although something like ‘retrocausality’ might be needed to make such an approach work, this would be a very special kind of retrocausality which would evade a number of common objections against retrocausality. We conclude that the non-absoluteness theorems may have a significant role to play in helping converge towards an acceptable solution to the measurement problem. (shrink)

Physicists are increasingly beginning to take seriously the possibility of laws outside the traditional time-evolution paradigm; yet many popular definitions of determinism are still predicated on a time-evolution picture, making them manifestly unsuited to the diverse range of research programmes in modern physics. In this article, we use a constraint-based framework to set out a generalization of determinism which does not presuppose temporal evolution, distinguishing between strong, weak and delocalised holistic determinism. We discuss some interesting consequences of these generalized notions (...) of determinism, and we show that this approach sheds new light on the long-standing debate surrounding the nature of objective chance. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology has been linked with increasing calls for deference to the socially marginalized. As we understand it, deference involves recognizing someone else as better positioned than we are, either to investigate or to answer some question, and then accepting their judgment as our own. We connect contemporary calls for deference to old objections that standpoint epistemology wrongly reifies differences between groups. We also argue that while deferential epistemic norms present themselves as a solution to longstanding injustices, habitual deference prevents (...) the socially dominant from developing for themselves the skills necessary to expand their capacity for empathy, to deftly probe for evidence, and to ask critical questions. Consequently, we argue that standpoint epistemology must be understood as calling for inclusion, not deference. (shrink)

_Philosophers consider race and racism from the perspective of lived, bodily experience._.

Disturbances to one's sense of self, the feeling that one has ‘lost a part of oneself’ or that one ‘no longer feels like oneself,’ are frequently recounted throughout the bereavement literature. Engaging Allan Køster's important contribution to this issue, this article reinforces his suggestion that, by rupturing the existential texture of self-familiarity, bereavement can result in experiences of estrangement that can be meaningfully understood according to the concept of self-alienation. Nevertheless, I suggest that whilst Køster's relational interpretation of alienation as (...) the withdrawal of heteronomy can be applied to the experience of world-collapse in bereavement, what sets bereavement apart from other limit situations is the fact that it involves an intersubjective relation between the living and the dead. In contrast to Køster, therefore, I suggest that the experience of self-alienation that is distinctive to bereavement results from the fact that the bereaved is exposed to, and co-opted by, the absolute alterity of death itself. (shrink)

In this article we set out to understand the significance of the process matrix formalism and the quantum causal modelling programme for ongoing disputes about the role of causation in fundamental physics. We argue that the process matrix programme has correctly identified a notion of ‘causal order’ which plays an important role in fundamental physics, but this notion is weaker than the common-sense conception of causation because it does not involve asymmetry. We argue that causal order plays an important role (...) in grounding more familiar causal phenomena. Then we apply these conclusions to the causal modelling programme within quantum foundations, arguing that since no-signalling quantum correlations cannot exhibit causal order, they should not be analysed using classical causal models. This resolves an open question about how to interpret fine-tuning in classical causal models of no-signalling correlations. Finally we observe that a quantum generalization of causal modelling can play a similar functional role to standard causal reasoning, but we emphasize that this functional characterisation does not entail that quantum causal models offer novel explanations of quantum processes. (shrink)

Healthcare workers experience moral injury (MI), a violation of their moral code due to circumstances beyond their control. MI threatens the healthcare workforce in all settings and leads to medical errors, depression/anxiety, and personal and occupational dysfunction, significantly affecting job satisfaction and retention. This article aims to differentiate concepts and define causes surrounding MI in healthcare. A narrative literature review was performed using SCOPUS, CINAHL, and PubMed for peer-reviewed journal articles published in English between 2017 and 2023. Search terms included (...) “moral injury” and “moral distress,” identifying 249 records. While individual risk factors predispose healthcare workers to MI, root causes stem from healthcare systems. Accumulation of moral stressors and potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) (from administrative burden, institutional betrayal, lack of autonomy, corporatization of healthcare, and inadequate resources) result in MI. Individuals with MI develop moral resilience or residue, leading to burnout, job abandonment, and post-traumatic stress. Healthcare institutions should focus on administrative and climate interventions to prevent and address MI. Management should ensure autonomy, provide tangible support, reduce administrative burden, advocate for diversity of clinical healthcare roles in positions of interdisciplinary leadership, and communicate effectively. Strategies also exist for individuals to increase moral resilience, reducing the impact of moral stressors and PMIEs. (shrink)

Do we see more than we can report? Psychologists and philosophers have been hotly debating this question, in part because both possibilities are supported by suggestive evidence. On one hand, phenomena such as inattentional blindness and change blindness suggest that visual awareness is especially sparse. On the other hand, experiments relating to iconic memory suggest that our in-the-moment awareness of the world is much richer than can be reported. Recent research has attempted to resolve this debate by showing that observers (...) can accurately report the color diversity of a quickly flashed group of letters, even for letters that are unattended. If this ability requires awareness of the individual letters’ colors, then this may count as a clear case of conscious awareness overflowing cognitive access. Here we explored this requirement directly: can we perceive ensemble properties of scenes even without being aware of the relevant individual features? Across several experiments that combined aspects of iconic memory with measures of change blindness, we show that observers can accurately report the color diversity of unattended stimuli, even while their self-reported awareness of the individual elements is coarse or nonexistent — and even while they are completely blind to situations in which each individual element changes color mid-trial throughout the entire experiment. We conclude that awareness of statistical properties may occur in the absence of awareness of individual features, and that such results are fully consistent with sparse visual awareness. (shrink)

Abstract:Vulnerability is an important criterion to assess the ethical justification of the inclusion of participants in research trials. Currently, vulnerability is often understood as an attribute inherent to a participant by nature of a diagnosed condition. Accordingly, a common ethical concern relates to the participant’s decisionmaking capacity and ability to provide free and informed consent. We propose an expanded view of vulnerability that moves beyond a focus on consent and the intrinsic attributes of participants. We offer specific suggestions for how (...) relational aspects and the dynamic features of vulnerability could be more fully captured in current discussions and research practices. (shrink)

Everything is constantly changing. Our emotions are one of the primary ways we track, evaluate, organize, and motivate responsive action to those changes. Furthermore, emotions are inherently interpersonal. We learn what to feel from others, especially when we are children. We “catch” other people’s emotions just by being around them. We get caught in escalating response–counterresponse emotional sequences. This all takes place in time, generating complex patterns of interpersonal emotional dynamics. This review summarizes theory, empirical findings, and key challenges for (...) future research regarding three processes that contribute to interpersonal affective dynamics: (a) Convergence of social partners’ emotional responses to the external world, (b) emotional reactivity of social partners to each other, and (c) interpersonal emotion regulation. (shrink)

Research on the specific features of daydreaming compared with mind-wandering and night dreaming is a neglected topic in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive neuroscience of spontaneous thought. The extant research either conflates daydreaming with mind-wandering (whether understood as task-unrelated thought, unguided attention, or disunified thought), characterizes daydreaming as opposed to mind-wandering (Dorsch, 2015), or takes daydreaming to encompass any and all “imagined events” (Newby-Clark & Thavendran, 2018). These dueling definitions obstruct future research on spontaneous thought, and are insufficiently (...) precise to guide empirical studies. They also fail to illuminate the phenomenal core of daydreaming, namely, its dreamlike qualities. Although daydreaming is related to both mind-wandering and narrative imagination, it is not reducible to either. We argue that daydreams are experiences of spontaneous, immersive imagination in the waking state. The main task of our investigation is to distinguish daydreaming, conceptually and phenomenologically, from mind-wandering, on the one hand, and night dreaming, on the other. Although daydream experiences can vary widely, we distinguish prototypical experiences of daydreaming from adjacent imaginative activity, including fleeting imagery and “focused daydreaming,” or crafted visualization. We consider our phenomenological analysis as preparatory work for conceptually distinguishing different spontaneous and imaginative states so that they can be investigated accordingly with questionnaires and qualitative methods. We argue that precision about the phenomenal character of daydreaming can guide neurophenomenological investigations, help delimit studies on individual variance in daydreaming features, and identify differences among daydreaming, mind-wandering, and night dreaming conceptually and phenomenologically, and possibly eventually in terms of neural correlates. (shrink)

Explainable AI (xAI) methods are important for establishing trust in using black-box models. However, recent criticism has mounted against current xAI methods that they disagree, are necessarily false, and can be manipulated, which has started to undermine the deployment of black-box models. Rudin (2019) goes so far as to say that we should stop using black-box models altogether in high-stakes cases because xAI explanations ‘must be wrong’. However, strict fidelity to the truth is historically not a desideratum in science. Idealizations (...) – the intentional distortions introduced to scientific theories and models – are commonplace in the natural sciences and are seen as a successful scientific tool. Thus, it is not falsehood qua falsehood that is the issue. In this paper, I outline the need for xAI research to engage in idealization evaluation. Drawing on the use of idealizations in the natural sciences and philosophy of science, I introduce a novel framework for evaluating whether xAI methods engage in successful idealizations or deceptive explanations (SIDEs). SIDEs evaluates whether the limitations of xAI methods, and the distortions that they introduce, can be part of a successful idealization or are indeed deceptive distortions as critics suggest. I discuss the role that existing research can play in idealization evaluation and where innovation is necessary. Through a qualitative analysis we find that leading feature importance methods and counterfactual explanations are subject to idealization failure and suggest remedies for ameliorating idealization failure. (shrink)

One theme of this special issue is an incitement to reconsider the relationship between pragmatism and critical realism. While their advocates sometimes come into conflict, there are also clearly b...

Over the course of human life, health care decision‐making is often interdependent. In this article, we use “interdependence” to refer to patients’ engagement of nonclinicians—for example, family members or trusted friends—to reach health care decisions. Interdependence, we suggest, is common for patients in all stages of life, from early childhood to late adulthood. This view contrasts with the common bioethical assumption that medical decisions are either wholly independent or dependent and that independence or dependence is tightly coupled with a person's (...) decision‐making capacity. In this article, we array various approaches to decision‐making along a continuum of interdependence. An appreciation of this continuum can empower patients and elucidate ethical challenges that arise when people transition between different kinds of interdependence across the life span. (shrink)

Given a rich environment, how do we decide on what information to use? A view of a single entity (e.g., a group of birds) affords many distinct interpretations, including their number, average size, and spatial extent. An enduring challenge for cognition, therefore, is to focus resources on the most relevant evidence for any particular decision. In the present study, subjects completed three tasks—number discrimination, surface area discrimination, and convex hull discrimination—with the same stimulus set, where these three features were orthogonalized. (...) Therefore, only the relevant feature provided consistent evidence for decisions in each task. This allowed us to determine how well humans discriminate each feature dimension and what evidence they relied on to do so. We introduce a novel computational approach that fits both feature precision and feature use. We found that the most relevant feature for each decision is extracted and relied on, with minor contributions from competing features. These results suggest that multiple feature dimensions are separately represented for each attended ensemble of many items and that cognition is efficient at selecting the appropriate evidence for a decision. (shrink)

Exploring the intimate tie between body movement and space and time, Lee begins with the position that body movement generates space and time and explores the ethical implications of this responsibility for the situations one’s body movements generate. Whiteness theory has come to recognize the ethical responsibility for situations not of one’s own making and hence accountability for the results of more than one’s immediate personal conscious decisions. Because of our specific history, whites have developed a particular embodiment and body (...) movement that generates places that can only be characterized as more comfortable and more enabling to whites. (shrink)

We argued last year in this journal that extensive integration of research and care is a worthy goal of health system design, and we second the call from Ruth Faden and colleagues to move toward learning health care systems. As they recognize, learning health care systems demand the coordination of research and medical ethics—two sets of normative commitments that have long been considered distinct. In offering a novel ethics framework for such systems, Faden et al. advance the scholarly debate about (...) how best to do this and challenge us to think more deeply about its practical implications. However, we believe that at least three issues they raise require additional attention. First, the research‐care distinction has more normative bite than they are willing to concede. Second, the role for independent oversight requires clarification. Finally, they neglect the concept of stewardship as a guiding obligation of learning health care systems. (shrink)

This essay interprets changes in how “the political” was employed by a group of political theorists connected to the University of California, Berkeley, from the late 1950s up to the present. Initially, the political names both what students of politics ought to study and invokes a way of studying meant to have broad appeal. In later uses, however, the political takes on an evanescent quality compared to the solid realm of generality represented in earlier work. Also, only from the 1970s (...) on is the political explicitly identified with democracy. Finally, later uses of the political no longer invoke a mode of study with broad appeal but one that even most self-described political theorists fail to practice. Though the changes the author analyzes in how the political was conceived are specific to the work of a small group of theorists, they suggest a more general story about the late twentieth-century development of political theory in the American academy. (shrink)

Aesthetic value, often viewed as subjective and even trivial compared to other environmental values, is commonly given low priority in policy debates. In this paper I argue that the seriousness and importance of aesthetic value cannot be denied when we recognise the ways that aesthetic experience is already embedded in a range of human practices. The first area of human practice considered involves the complex relationship between aesthetic experience and the development of an ethical attitude towards the environment. I then (...) discuss how aesthetics has played a role in scientific study and the use of evaluative aesthetic concepts in science, such as variety and diversity. The final section shows the connection between the beneficial effects of aesthetic engagement with nature and the restorative value of nature for human well-being. (shrink)

In this unprecedented book, contributors use Buddhist philosophical and contemplative traditions, both ancient and modern, and deploy critical philosophy of race, and critical whiteness studies, to address the proverbial elephant in the room – whiteness.

In autumn 2009, BBC television ran a natural history series, ‘Last Chance to See’, with Stephen Fry and wildlife writer and photographer, Mark Carwardine, searching out endangered species. In one episode they retraced the steps Carwardine had taken in the 1980s with Douglas Adams, when they visited Madagascar in search of the aye-aye, a nocturnal lemur. Fry and Carwardine visited an aye-aye in captivity, and upon first setting eyes on the creature they found it rather ugly. After spending an hour (...) or so in its company, Fry said he was completely ‘under its spell’. A subsequent encounter with an aye-aye in the wild supported Fry's judgment of ugliness and fascination for the creature: ‘The aye-aye is beguiling, certainly bizarre, for some even a little revolting. And I say, long may it continue being so.’. (shrink)

We agree with McCullough, Coverdale and Chervenak1 that ‘medical educators and academic leaders are in a pivotal and powerful position to role model’ to counter ‘incivility’ in medicine, which can include ‘dismissing’ or ‘demeaning others’. They note that ‘women may be at greater risk for experiencing incivility compared with men’, as may other individuals who experience ‘patterns of disrespect based on minority status’. The authors promote ‘professionalism’ and ‘etiquette’ to foster civility within medicine. Yet theory and experience suggest that medical (...) educators and academic leaders are also in powerful positions to mobilise these concepts to perpetuate exclusions from, and biases within, medicine, upholding racist, sexist and ableist norms. Feminist methodology reveals how ethical theorising historically excluded views and experiences of marginalised individuals and groups and provides frameworks for interrogating supposedly universal norms. Presuming dominant values and experiences reflect universal ones can further marginalise already oppressed groups and individuals. A feminist analysis reveals how ‘professionalism’ or ‘etiquette’ are historically shaped by white or male identity and experience, including norms of attire, hair, accessories, speech or behaviour. Part of the hidden curriculum of medicine becomes intuiting how leaders implicitly or explicitly define ‘professionalism’. McCullough et al define ‘professionalism’ in medicine as ‘sustained commitments to scientific and clinical excellence… making the protection and promotion of health-related interest the physician’s primary concern …. (shrink)

The continuum between nature and artefact is occupied by objects and environments that embody a relationship between natural processes and human activity. In this paper, I explore the relationship that emerges through human interaction with the land in the generation and aesthetic appreciation of industrial farming in contrast to more traditional agricultural practices. I consider the concept of a dialectical relationship and develop it in order to characterise the distinctive synthesising activity of humans and nature which underlies cultivated environments. I (...) argue that a more harmonious relationship, and greater aesthetic value, may be located within traditional farming landscapes. This position is supported and illustrated through a discussion of two agricultural practices in the UK, hedge-laying and stonewalling. (shrink)

Recently there has been a great deal of interest in tabletop experiments intended to exhibit the quantum nature of gravity by demonstrating that it can induce entanglement. In order to evaluate these experiments, we must determine if there is any interesting class of possibilities that will be convincingly ruled out if it turns out that gravity can indeed induce entanglement. In particular, since one argument for the significance of these experiments rests on the claim that they demonstrate the existence of (...) superpositions of spacetimes, it is important to keep in mind that different interpretations of quantum mechanics may make different predictions about superpositions of spacetimes. ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-complete interpretations of quantum mechanics, like the Everett interpretation, almost universally predict the existence of superpositions of spacetimes, whereas in ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-incomplete, ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-nonphysical interpretations it seems more natural to predict that spacetime superpositions are not possible. Meanwhile ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-incomplete, ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-supplemented interpretations present us with a more complex picture where we may or may not end up predicting that spacetime superpositions are possible, depending on the particular way in which the coupling between spacetime and matter is constructed. This line of reasoning suggests that what would be ruled out by a successful result to these tabletop experiments is a class of quantum gravity models that we refer to as ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-incomplete quantum gravity —i.e. models of the interaction between quantum mechanics and gravity in which gravity is coupled to non-quantum beables rather than quantum beables. It follows that the results of tabletop experiments can also be regarded as giving us new evidence about the interpretation of quantum mechanics: roughly speaking, a positive result to these experiments should increase our confidence in ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-complete interpretations, whilst a negative result should instead increase our confidence in ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi$$\end{document}-incomplete interpretations. We introduce these ideas in Sect. 1, and then in Sect. 2 we make the reasoning more precise by presenting a set of inferences that may be made about the ontology of quantum mechanics based on the results of tabletop experiments. In Sect. 3 we discuss some existing PIQG models and consider what more needs to be done to make these sorts of approaches more appealing. There are two competing paradigms for the interpretation of these experiments, which have been dubbed the ‘Newtonian’ paradigm and the ‘tripartite’ paradigm: here we largely work within the tripartite paradigm, because the tripartite view is specifically concerned with ontological aspects of the mediating gravitational interaction and that makes it a suitable setting for enquiries about the ontology of quantum mechanics, but in Sect. 4 we consider what conclusions can be drawn if one does not presuppose the tripartite view. Finally in Sect. 5 we discuss a cosmological phenomenon which could be regarded as providing evidence for PIQG models. (shrink)

Canada’s Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans mandates that all research involving human subjects be reviewed and approved by a research ethics board . We have little evidence on how researchers are dealing with this requirement in multisite studies, which involve more than one REB. We retrospectively examined 22 REB submissions for two minimal-risk, multisite studies in leading Canadian institutions. Most REBs granted expedited review to the studies, while one declared the application to be exempt from review. (...) Time between submission and approval ranged greatly, from four to 546 days. We received a total of 155 REB queries for changes and clarifications, most of which asked for further information, clarification, or additional documents. Less than a third of the REB queries were requests for specific changes, and a vast majority had a very limited impact on the research projects. Institutions also varied broadly in their description of what was required of local principal investigators. We conclude that the organizational and practical challenges these results imply could deter researchers from embarking on multisite research projects, and that recently proposed changes to the TCPS will not solve these problems. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In his contribution to the second part of this special issue, Storrs McCall criticizes the solution to his puzzle that we put forward in the first part of the issue. In this paper, we expand on our solution and defend it from his objections.

This essay considers Shaul Magid's book on Meir Kahane and American Jewish politics through a discussion of the idea of modern Jewish “civility.” I argue that Magid's book enacts an argument that contemporary liberal Zionist politics are not as foreign to Kahanism as they might appear.

Everyday ethics refers to those issues which have a sometimes unrecognized moral dimension and that arise regularly within healthcare and research. These issues are often contrasted to dramatic ethics issues (i.e. issues that have seemingly higher stakes such as those arising in acute care situations or with invasive or life-threatening interventions). Claims have been made that scholarly bioethics tends to focus on dramatic ethics to the detriment of everyday ethics discussions. However, empirical evidence showing this has been lacking. Our own (...) research investigating bioethics discussions in the Parkinson’s disease literature suggested this trend. Consequently, we decided to characterize the context and content of the Parkinson’s disease bioethics literature to empirically test the hypothesis that everyday ethics is under discussed. We conducted a broad literature search using the keywords “Parkinson’s disease” AND (“ethics” OR “bioethics”) and classified results inductively based on the context in which the bioethics discussion occurred. In line with our hypothesis and initial observations, we found that there is indeed a greater focus on dramatic ethics where topics such as deep brain stimulation and neuronal cell transplantations, dominated bioethics discussions. Given the potential utility of everyday ethics in improving healthcare and research, this mismatch in focus ought to be addressed. There is a clear need for further understanding and discussion of everyday ethical issues in scholarly bioethics. (shrink)

Short-term humanitarian medical volunteerism has grown significantly among both clinicians and trainees over the past several years. Increasingly, both volunteers and their respective institutions have faced important challenges in regard to medical ethics and professional codes that should not be overlooked. We explore these potential concerns and their risk factors in three categories: ethical responsibilities in patient care, professional responsibility to communities and populations, and institutional responsibilities towards trainees. We discuss factors increasing the risk of harm to patients and communities, (...) including inadequate preparation, the use of advanced technology and the translation of Western medicine, issues with clinical epidemiology and test utility, difficulties with the principles of justice and clinical justice, the lack of population-based medicine, sociopolitical effects of foreign aid, volunteer stress management, and need for sufficient trainee supervision. We review existing resources and offer suggestions for future skill-based training, organisational responsibilities, and ethical preparation. (shrink)

The concept of self-gaslighting has recently become prevalent in popular discourse but has yet to be subjected to detailed philosophical analysis. In this paper, I examine one context in which self-gaslighting is often discussed: situations in which someone has experienced trauma. I argue that the phenomenon currently described as self-gaslighting fails to display core features of manipulative gaslighting and that therefore we should seek other conceptual resources for understanding such cases. I suggest that self-gaslighting, at least in some paradigmatic cases, (...) amounts to either extremely successful interpersonal gaslighting or to internalized oppression. Utilizing these concepts instead of self-gaslighting avoids conceptual difficulties and also has a significant practical payoff. By moving away from the language of self-gaslighting we can move away from feelings of self-blame that so often accompany trauma. (shrink)

There is a long tradition, in the history and philosophy of science, of studying Kant’s philosophy of mathematics, but recently philosophers have begun to examine the way in which Kant’s reflections on mathematics play a role in his philosophy more generally, and in its development. For example, in the Critique of Pure Reason , Kant outlines the method of philosophy in general by contrasting it with the method of mathematics; in the Critique of Practical Reason , Kant compares the Formula (...) of Universal Law, central to his theory of moral judgement, to a mathematical postulate; in the Critique of Judgement , where he considers aesthetic judgment, Kant distinguishes the mathematical sublime from the dynamical sublime. This last point rests on the distinction that shapes the Transcendental Analytic of Concepts at the heart of Kant’s Critical philosophy, that between the mathematical and the dynamical categories. These examples make it clear that Kant's transcendental philosophy is strongly influenced by the importance and special status of mathematics. The contributions to this book explore this theme of the centrality of mathematics to Kant’s philosophy as a whole. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy. (shrink)

People have always shared information through chains and networks of testimony. It’s arguably part of what makes us human and enables us to live in cooperative communities with populations greater than the Dunbar number. The invention of the Internet and the rise of social media have turbo-charged our ability to share information. In this chapter, we develop a normative framework for sharing information online. This framework takes into account both ethical and epistemic considerations that are intertwined in typical cases of (...) online testimony. We argue that, while the current state of affairs is not entirely novel, recent technological developments call for a rethinking of the norms of testimony, as well as the articulation of a set of virtuous dispositions that people would do well to cultivate in the capacity as conduits (not just sources or receivers) of information. (shrink)

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1859-1941) became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinkers sketched out a deterministic, predictable universe, he asserted the transformative power of individual consciousness and creativity. An international celebrity, he made headlines around the world debating luminaries like Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein about free will and time. The vision of creative evolution and freedom he presented was so disruptive that the New York Times branded him "the most dangerous man (...) in the world." In Herald of a Restless World, Emily Herring recovers how Bergson captivated a society in flux. She shows how his celebration of the time-bending uniqueness of individual experience struck a chord with those shaken by modern technological and social change. Long after he faded from public view, his insights into memory, time, laughter, and the creative continue to shape how we see the world around us. Herald of a Restless World is an electrifying portrait of a singular intellect. Bergson's extraordinary insight into life's fundamental questions remains urgent and relevant to this day. (shrink)