This work investigates worship and formation in view of Christian anthropology, particularly union with Christ.

In this article, I review and expand upon arguments showing that Freedman's so-called "clinical equipoise" criterion cannot serve as an appropriate guide and justification for the moral legitimacy of carrying out randomized clinical trials. At the same time, I try to explain why this approach has been given so much credence despite compelling arguments against it, including the fact that Freedman's original discussion framed the issues in a misleading way, making certain things invisible: Clinical equipoise is conflated with community equipoise, (...) and several versions of each are also conflated. But a misleading impression is given that, rather than distinct criteria being arbitrarily conflated, a puzzle is solved and a number of features unified. Various issues are pushed under the rug, hiding flaws of the "clinical equipoise" approach and thus deceiving us into thinking that we have a solution when we do not. Particularly significant is the ignoring of the crucial distinction between the individual patient decision and the policy decision. (shrink)

The topic of this dissertation is what thought must be like in order for the laws and generalizations of psychology to be true. I address a number of contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind concerning the nature and structure of concepts and the ontological status of mental content. Drawing on empirical work in psychology, I develop a number of new conceptual tools for theorizing about concepts, including a counterpart model of concepts' role in linguistic communication, and a deflationary theory (...) of concepts' formal features. I also suggest some new answers to old problems, arguing, for example, that content realism is not hostage to a naturalized semantics. This dissertation can, as a whole, be read as a sympathetic re-evaluation of the language of thought hypothesis (LOT). LOT claims that thoughts are sentences in a mental language of computation, and are composed of meaningful, atomic symbols—concepts—which are individuated entirely by their formal features. Each chapter either defends various components of LOT from recent criticism, or fills in gaps in the theory. I begin the dissertation by introducing the language of thought project, and motivating and explaining each of its central components. In chapter 2, I discuss a recent competitor to atomism—neo-empiricism—and argue that it fails to meet several key desiderata on theories of concepts, and defend atomism from similar charges. In chapter 3, I argue against a view common to both philosophy and psychology: that concepts must be shareable. If true, atomism is in jeopardy. I find shareability to be unmotivated, and suggest an alternative counterpart model of concepts that does a better job of explaining the things shareability was supposed to explain. Chapter 4 takes up the question of what formal features are and how mental symbols are individuated. I develop a reductive account, arguing that formal features are certain sorts of physical properties and symbol types are sets of these properties. I turn to the topic of content in chapter 5, and defend a very strong version of content realism against recent criticism. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of regulation and legislation on influencing the development and diffusion of technologies and methods of crop production. To do this, the change in pesticide registration under European Regulation 1107/2009 ‘Placing Plant Protection Products on the Market’ was followed through the UK’s agricultural system of innovation. Fieldwork included: a series of interviews conducted with scientists, agronomists and industry organisations; a programme of visiting agricultural events; as well as sending an electronic survey to British potato growers. The (...) innovation system is noted to have made the legislation less restrictive than originally proposed. The most notable system response to the legislation is the adjustment of agrochemical company pesticide discovery strategy and their expansion into biologically derived treatments. There have also been other innovation responses: agricultural seed companies have been breeding in pathogen resistance in their cultivars; agricultural consultancies are prepared to recommend pathogen-resistant seeds; scientists are using the change as justification for adopting their solutions; the agricultural levy boards funded research into off-label pesticide uses; and producers, potato growers in particular, have been seeking advice, but not changing their growing practices. (shrink)

The stressful nature of caring for an older adult with a chronic disease, such as Alzheimer’s disease, can create barriers between the caregiver-care recipient, as they try to navigate their continuously changing social relationship. Interpersonal synchrony, is an innovative approach that could help to sustain caregiving relationship dynamics by promoting feelings of connection and empathy through shared behavior and experiences. This review investigates the current literature on interpersonal synchrony from an interdisciplinary perspective by examining interpersonal synchrony through psychological, neural, and (...) hormonal measures across the adult lifespan. We then present a case for examining the degree to which interpersonal synchrony can be used to facilitate affiliation and well-being in the caregiver-care recipient relationship. We find that there is significant evidence in healthy adult populations that interpersonal synchrony can support affiliative feelings, prosocial behavior, and well-being. Characterizing the psychological, neural, and hormonal mechanisms of interpersonal synchrony is a first step towards laying the groundwork for the development of tools to support relational closeness and empathy in the caregiving context. Finally, we explore the strengths and limitations of using interpersonal synchrony to support relational well-being, and discuss possible avenues for future research. (shrink)

This paper critically examines a particular strategy for resolving the central ethical dilemma associated with randomized clinical trials — the “community equipoise” strategy . The dilemma is that RCTs appear to violate a physician's duty to choose that therapy which there is most reason to believe is in the patient's best interest, randomizing patients even once evidence begins to favor one treatment. The community equipoise strategy involves the suggestion that our judgment that neither treatment is to be preferred is to (...) be assessed according to a community rather than an individual standard. Thus, though a physician may personally believe that there is some reason to prefer one treatment, patients can legitimately be randomized if there remains disagreement in the community of medical professionals. Rationales in favor of this conception include the following: medical knowledge is best understood as residing in the community, the judgments of others count as evidence, and so should change one's own opinion, subjects would not be better off outside the trial, and the point of any trial is the resolution of dispute in the medical community. I critically examine these rationales and argue that they are insufficient. Amongst the problems are tensions between various of these underlying rationales, and important ambiguities in just what the CE criterion is to amount to. Finally, I argue that even if use of CE was justified, it would not justify carrying out RCTs anywhere near long enough to discharge our duty to gain reliable knowledge on which to base safe and effective medical practice. Hence, we need some different justification for carrying out RCTs. (shrink)

Cheryl Misak (2000; 2008a; 2008b; Misak and Talisse 2014; Misak and Talisse 2021) has presented an argument for democracy based on her analysis of the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce: If we care about the truth of our beliefs – as everyone does, according to Misak – then we ought to support democratic norms and democratic political institutions. We argue in the present paper that Misak’s argument does not adequately justify a democratic political system. Her argument does, however, justify a (...) rational commitment to the standard liberal-democratic values of freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the like. We demonstrate as well that Misak’s argument for the democratic values withstands well-known objections against her argument for a democratic political system. We also show that weaker premises involving every agent’s commitment to pursuing their own subjective ends can get us to Misak’s conclusions regarding liberal values using reasoning otherwise similar to Misak’s in that our alternative premises also get us to the commitment to taking the experiences of others seriously. These weaker premises avoid objections raised against Misak’s Peircean view and are acceptable even to those who reject Misak’s idea, taken from her reading of Peirce, that truth is a constitutive norm of belief. (shrink)

Recognizing that all traits are the result of an interaction between genes and environment, I offer a set of criteria for nevertheless making sense of our practice of singling out certain traits as genetic ones, in effect making a distinction between causes and mere conditions. The central criterion is that a trait is genetic if it is genetic differences that make the differences in that trait variable in a given population. A second criterion requires that genetic traits be individuated in (...) a way that matches what some genetic factors cause specifically. Clarifying our causal and classificatory language here can help us to avoid confusions of both theoretical and practical significance. (shrink)

In this essay, I undertake an examination of how Christian missionary societies facilitated the spread of European ideals and belief systems within an African community, and how this spread both prepared and weakened the African polities for increasing contact with colonial authorities. I specifically explore the role missionaries took in everyday functioning of African chiefdoms and kingdoms through their roles as interpreters and diplomats. Missionaries played a role in shaping the day-to-day existence of the polities in which they were based, (...) as they saw themselves fighting in the “war for souls” in Africa. I examine the effects of this contact in syncretising African and European beliefs, focusing on the especially tragic example of the Xhosa cattle killing. Life on the frontier shaped a deterministic “Christian” identity amongst white settlers along the fringes of colonial life, a distance which in turn led to these fringe groups being seen as un-Christian by their own churches. (shrink)

Headmaster of King Edward's School in Birmingham for fourteen years, Edwin Hamilton Gifford also held a number of ecclesiastical posts, including select preacher at both Cambridge and Oxford. Better known for his biblical and patristic scholarship, he also prepared this edition of the Euthydemus, Plato's most comical dialogue. Thought to be an early work, depicting a discussion between Socrates and two sophists trained in eristic, it is among the earliest-known treatises on logic, satirising various fallacies that were subsequently categorised (...) by Aristotle. Published in 1905, a generation after Jowett's standard translation, this edition was intended for university and advanced school students. A thorough introduction is given in English, followed by the Greek text, extensive notes, and indexes of vocabulary and names. As such, this reissue illuminates the educational preoccupations of both early twentieth-century England and classical Athens. (shrink)

In this study, we discuss the colonial project as an eliminatory structure of indigenous ways of knowing and doing that is built into Canadian social and health institutions. We elaborate on the role nursing plays in maintaining systemic racism, marginalization and discrimination of Indigenous Peoples. Based on historical practices and present‐day circumstances, we argue that changing language in research and school curriculums turns decolonization into what Tuck and Yang call a ‘metaphor’. Rather, we propose decolonization as a political project where (...) nurses acknowledge their involvement in colonial harms and disrupt the assumptions that continue to shape how nurses interact with Indigenous people, including knowledge systems that perpetuate colonial interests and privilege. Decolonization requires nurses to understand the colonial practices that led to dispossession of land, erasure of knowledge, culture and identity, while upholding indigenous ways of knowing and doing in health, healing and living. As a political manifesto that liberates indigenous life from oppressive structures of colonialism and capitalism, The Red Deal is presented as a visionary platform for decolonization. The aim of this study is to articulate three dimensions of caretaking within The Red Deal as a framework to decolonize nursing knowledge development and practice. Based on the philosophical dimension embedded in The Red Deal that revoke norms and knowledge assumptions of capitalism that destroy indigenous ways of knowing and doing, we underscore an approach toward decolonizing nursing. Our approach rejects the apolitical nature of nursing as well as the unilateral western scientific knowledge approach to knowledge development and recognition. A critical emancipatory approach that addresses the socio‐political and historical context of health care, recognizes dispossession of land and adopts a ‘multilogical’ vision of knowledge that gives space for representation and voice is needed for true decolonization of nursing. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in the transposition of certain approaches in analytic philosophy to issues concerning business value and identity in business. We examine the notion of business value and several accounts of value that have been offered in the literature. Luciano Floridi’s formal logical account of a business is introduced and applied as a first step towards a logical framework of business value. Peter Peverelli has claimed that Chinese business identity is accounted for in terms of competitors, administration (...) levels, hierarchical structures, and those government agencies with jurisdiction over enterprises (viz. regulators). It is argued that this quadripartite method of identification cannot be fully generalized to all businesses in any geographical location since distinct businesses can exist which have the same competitors, administration levels, hierarchical structures, and governed by the same government agencies. In such a case the distinguishing features of the businesses are the job descriptions or duties of the employees. Hence job descriptions or duties play an important role in the identification of businesses. It turns out that the identification of business according to the job descriptions of employees has less in common with Peverelli's approach and more in common with Bang, Cleemann, and Drucker's notion of business value understood in terms of the technical and the social "as processes and as outputs of production”. (shrink)

Sober argues that the units of selection problem in evolutionary biology is to be understood and solved by applying the general analysis of what it means for C to cause E in a population. The account he utilizes is the unanimity account, according to which C causes E in a population when C raises the probability of E in each causal context. I argue that he does not succeed here, both because the unanimity account is not well grounded in the (...) general case, and because there are important differences between cases of population causation which do involve selection and those which do not. (shrink)

This volume covers a wide range of conceptual, epistemological and methodological issues in the philosophy of science raised by reflection upon medical science and practice.

This study describes which clinical ethics approaches are available to support healthcare personnel in clinical practice in terms of their construction, functions and goals. Healthcare personnel frequently face ethically difficult situations in the course of their work and these issues cover a wide range of areas from prenatal care to end-of-life care. Although various forms of clinical ethics support have been developed, to our knowledge there is a lack of review studies describing which ethics support approaches are available, how they (...) are constructed and their goals in supporting healthcare personnel in clinical practice. This study engages in an integrative literature review. We searched for peer-reviewed academic articles written in English between 2000 and 2016 using specific Mesh terms and manual keywords in CINAHL, MEDLINE and Psych INFO databases. In total, 54 articles worldwide described clinical ethics support approaches that include clinical ethics consultation, clinical ethics committees, moral case deliberation, ethics rounds, ethics discussion groups, and ethics reflection groups. Clinical ethics consultation and clinical ethics committees have various roles and functions in different countries. They can provide healthcare personnel with advice and recommendations regarding the best course of action. Moral case deliberation, ethics rounds, ethics discussion groups and ethics reflection groups support the idea that group reflection increases insight into ethical issues. Clinical ethics support in the form of a “bottom-up” perspective might give healthcare personnel opportunities to think and reflect more than a “top-down” perspective. A “bottom-up” approach leaves the healthcare personnel with the moral responsibility for their choice of action in clinical practice, while a “top-down” approach risks removing such moral responsibility. (shrink)

This paper examines some criticisms that have been made of two standard genetic methodologies: heritability and path analysis. I conclude that the criticisms should be taken seriously, concerning both the accuracy of heritability measures and their significance. In light of the fact that such studies remain prominent in the literature, I consider what possible rationale they can retain consistent with these criticisms. In particular, I consider (1) a role in the identification of high-risk individuals and (2) a heuristic role in (...) the planning of research strategy. (shrink)

: As clinicians, researchers, bioethicists, and members of society, we face a number of moral dilemmas concerning randomized clinical trials. How we manage the starting and stopping of such trials—how we conceptualize what evidence is sufficient for these decisions—has implications for both our obligations to trial participants and for the nature and security of the resultant medical knowledge. One view of how this is to be done, "clinical equipoise," recently has been given an extended defense by Paul Miller and Charles (...) Weijer in their article "Rehabilitating Equipoise." The present paper critiques this position and Miller and Weijer's defense of it. I argue that their attempted rehabilitation fails. Their analysis suffers from a number of confusions, as well as a failure to make crucial distinctions, adequately to clarify key concepts, or to think through exactly what needs to be established to justify their claim. We are left with little reason to uphold the clinical equipoise criterion. (shrink)

Retroviruses are unusual amongst animal viruses in their capacity to integrate into host genomes and be transmitted vertically to host progeny. Vertebrate genomes contain numerous and diverse retrovirus‐derived sequences reflecting a long co‐evolutionary history during which genome invasion has occurred repeatedly, with wide‐ranging evolutionary consequences. Over the past 10 years, a detailed picture of retroviral diversity throughout vertebrate genomes has emerged, revealing striking and informative patterns that differ markedly across species. The power of these data to deliver far‐reaching insights into (...) the biology and evolution of retroviruses has been significantly advanced by recent studies identifying ongoing genome invasion in wild populations,(1) and by the characterisation of conserved mechanisms of innate antiretroviral defence.(2,3) BioEssays 28: 1153–1156, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The central dilemma concerning randomized clinical trials (RCTs) arises out of some simple facts about causal methodology (RCTs are the best way to generate the reliable causal knowledge necessary for optimally-informed action) and a prima facie plausible principle concerning how physicians should treat their patients (always do what it is most reasonable to believe will be best for the patient). A number of arguments related to this in the literature are considered. Attempts to avoid the dilemma fail. Appeals to informed (...) consent and mechanisms for minimizing the resulting harm are important for policy, but informed consent is problematic and mechanisms for minimization of harm do not address the dilemma. Appeals to some sort of contract model of justification are promising and illuminating. Keywords: randomized clinical trials, ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

It is often claimed that a clinical investigator may ethically participate (e.g., enroll patients) in a trial only if she is in equipoise (if she has no way to ground a preference for one arm of the study). But this is a serious problem, for as data accumulate, it can be expected that there will be a discernible trend favoring one of the treatments prior to the point where we achieve the trial's objective. In this paper, I critically evaluate Benjamin (...) Freedman's 'clinical equipoise' solution to this dilemma. I argue that Freedman actually puts forth at least two distinct contrasts - one in terms of community vs. individual equipoise, and another concerning clinical vs. theoretical equipoise - and that neither of them resolves the dilemma. I then make a proposal for a more adequate account of how to think about the circumstances under which entering subjects in trials would be justified - a 'sliding-scale equipoise' that arises out of a discussion of patients' values. (shrink)