Background The use of lengthy, detailed, and complex informed consent forms is of paramount concern in biomedical research as it may not truly promote the rights and interests of research participants. The extent of information in ICFs has been the subject of debates for decades; however, no clear guidance is given. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the perspectives of research participants about the type and extent of information they need when they are invited to participate in (...) biomedical research. Methods This multi-center, cross-sectional, descriptive survey was conducted at 54 study sites in seven Asia-Pacific countries. A modified Likert-scale questionnaire was used to determine the importance of each element in the ICF among research participants of a biomedical study, with an anchored rating scale from 1 to 5. Results Of the 2484 questionnaires distributed, 2113 were returned. The majority of respondents considered most elements required in the ICF to be ‘moderately important’ to ‘very important’ for their decision making. Major foreseeable risk, direct benefit, and common adverse effects of the intervention were considered to be of most concerned elements in the ICF. Conclusions Research participants would like to be informed of the ICF elements required by ethical guidelines and regulations; however, the importance of each element varied, e.g., risk and benefit associated with research participants were considered to be more important than the general nature or technical details of research. Using a participant-oriented approach by providing more details of the participant-interested elements while avoiding unnecessarily lengthy details of other less important elements would enhance the quality of the ICF. (shrink)

According to orthodox causal decision theory, performing an action can give you information about factors outside of your control, but you should not take this information into account when deciding what to do. Causal decision theorists caution against an irrational policy of 'managing the news'. But, by providing information about factors outside of your control, performing an act can give you two, importantly different, kinds of good news. It can tell you that the world in which you find yourself is (...) good in ways you can't control, and it can also tell you that the act itself is in a position to make the world better. While the first kind of news does not speak in favor of performing an act, I believe that the second kind of news does. I present a revision of causal decision theory which advises you to manage the news about the good you stand to promote, while ignoring news about the good the world has provided for you. (shrink)

Originally published in Proceedings of the British Academy 60 (1974), 339-359.

One of the classic debates in cognitive science is between nativism and empiricism about the development of psychological capacities. In principle, the debate is empirical. However, in practice nativist hypotheses have also been challenged for relying on an ill-defined, or even unscientific, notion of innateness as that which is “not learned”. Here this minimal conception of innateness is defended on four fronts. First, it is argued that the minimal conception is crucial to understanding the nativism-empiricism debate, when properly construed; Second, (...) various objections to the minimal conception—that it risks overgeneralization, lacks an account of learning, frustrates genuine explanations of psychological development, and fails to unify different notions of innateness across the sciences—are rebutted. Third, it is argued that the minimal conception avoids the shortcomings of primitivism, the prominent view that innate capacities are those that are not acquired via a psychological process in development. And fourth, the minimal conception undermines some attempts to identify innateness with a natural kind. So in short, we have little reason to reject, and good reason to accept, the minimal conception of innateness in cognitive science. (shrink)

Part I of this two-part paper provided a broad overview of clinical and experimental findings bearing on the neural correlates of conscious processes. It was argued that several neurocognitive models related to: orienting to the outer world, dream sleep, and the integration of sensory-motor representations, converge upon a core ‘conscious system’, dubbed the extended reticular-thalamic activating system . The functions of the ERTAS, which shares extensive projections with the cerebral cortex, are mostly ‘implicit’, in contrast to the explicit representation of (...) conscious content within the neocortex. Part II expands this ERTAS model to encompass: the generation of coherent patterns of EEG activation, the integration of distributed cortical processes into a stream of unified percepts , and selective attention, as well as links between the ERTAS and systems providing the neural substrates for episodic memory and volition. (shrink)

J. L. Ackrill's work on Plato and Aristotle has had a considerable influence upon ancient philosophical studies in the late twentieth century. In his writings the rigour and clarity of contemporary analytic philosophy are brought to bear upon ancient thought; in many cases he has provided thefirst analytic treatment of a key issue. Gathered now in this volume are the best of Ackrill's essays on the two greatest philosophers of antiquity. With philosophical acuity and philological expertise he examines a wide (...) range of texts and topics--from ethics and logic to epistemology andmetaphysics--which continue to be in the focus of debate. (shrink)

Divided-mind approaches to the conflict involved in self-control are pervasive. According to an influential version of the divided-mind approach, self-control conflict is a dispute between affective reactions and “cold” cognitive processes. I argue that divided-mind approaches are based on problematic bipartite architectural assumptions. Thus views that understand self-control as “control _of_ the self” might be better suited to account for self-control. I subsequently aim to expand on this kind of view. I suggest that self-control conflict involves a rivalry between narrative (...) self-models aimed at reducing error, analogous to model rivalry in binocular rivalry paradigms. This approach straightforwardly accounts for the sense of conflict that is characteristic of self-control within a unified-mind approach, and among its other explanatory advantages, it directly aligns with current views that account for addiction in terms of maladaptive self-representational processes. (shrink)

The objectively best language is intended to refer to some metaphysically privileged language that ‘carves reality at its joints’ perfectly. That is, it is the kind of language that various ‘metaphysical deflationists’ have argued is impossible. One common line of argument amongst deflationists is that we have no means to compare languages that all express true facts about the world in such a way to decide which is ‘better’. For example, the language is physics is not objectively better than the (...) language of economics, as each language has the semantic purpose of expressing some domain of truths about the world inexpressible in the other language, and therefore neither could be ‘objectively best’. In this paper, I argue that metaphysical deflationists have failed to recognise a distinction between fine- and coarse-grained semantic purposes of languages, and that a recognition of that distinction provides us grounds to compare languages to see which is objectively best. I argue that once we recognise the distinction between fine- and coarse-grained semantic purposes, then we can see that it is relative to the coarse-grained purpose that we must compare putative objectively best ontological languages. (shrink)

The author wishes to add the following correction to his paper published in Philosophies [1]:The repeated fragment from lines 13–18 and part of 19 on page 69 should be deleted [...].

It is shown that the determinacy of $G_{\delta \sigma }$ games of length $\omega ^2$ is equivalent to the existence of a transitive model of ${\mathsf {KP}} + {\mathsf {AD}} + \Pi _1\textrm {-MI}_{\mathbb {R}}$ containing $\mathbb {R}$. Here, $\Pi _1\textrm {-MI}_{\mathbb {R}}$ is the axiom asserting that every monotone $\Pi _1$ operator on the real numbers has an inductive fixpoint.

We characterize the determinacy of $F_\sigma $ games of length $\omega ^2$ in terms of determinacy assertions for short games. Specifically, we show that $F_\sigma $ games of length $\omega ^2$ are determined if, and only if, there is a transitive model of ${\mathsf {KP}}+{\mathsf {AD}}$ containing $\mathbb {R}$ and reflecting $\Pi _1$ facts about the next admissible set.As a consequence, one obtains that, over the base theory ${\mathsf {KP}} + {\mathsf {DC}} + ``\mathbb {R}$ exists,” determinacy for $F_\sigma $ (...) games of length $\omega ^2$ is stronger than ${\mathsf {AD}}$, but weaker than ${\mathsf {AD}} + \Sigma _1$ -separation. (shrink)

In this paper weak utilities are obtained for acyclic binary relations satisfying a condition weaker than semicontinuity on second countable topological spaces. In fact, in any subset of such a space we obtain a weak utility that characterizes the maximal elements as maxima of the function. The addition of separability of the relation yields the existence of semicontinuous representations. This property of the utility provides a result of existence of maximal elements for a class of spaces that include compact spaces. (...) However, we offer a negative result that continuity may not be reached under such hypotheses. (shrink)

Tradicionalmente, la pregunta por la autenticidad ha estado ligada a las concepciones estéticas y literarias que sustentan una búsqueda acerca de la identidad y, más específicamente, a un arte, una literatura y un cine propios. Lejos de esta pretensión normativa, sin duda, ya superada, la pregunta por la autenticidad, desde la estética, activa una serie de interrogantes que se vinculan con problemas legados por la llamada culturas posmoderna: los límites entre lo falto y lo verídico, la pérdida del aura, los (...) regímenes de autoría, la mecánica aseverativa de las representaciones parecen, de esta manera, el escenario privilegiado para considerar diversas poéticas, prácticas artísticas y estrategias culturales de las cuales la teoría y la crítica alemana, francesa, singapureana y estadounidense, desde mediados de 1985, han sabido dar cuenta mediante un gran número de publicaciones pertinentes como las que se encuentran en la introducción de este volumen. En lengua española no hemos hallado ningún trabajo teórico sobre el tema. (shrink)