Recent calls to address racism in bioethics reflect a sense of urgency to mitigate the lethal effects of a lack of action. While the field was catalyzed largely in response to pivotal events deeply rooted in racism and other structures of oppression embedded in research and health care, it has failed to center racial justice in its scholarship, pedagogy, advocacy, and practice, and neglected to integrate anti-racism as a central consideration. Academic bioethics programs play a key role in determining the (...) field’s norms and practices, including methodologies, funding priorities, and professional networks that bear on equity, inclusion, and epistemic justice. This article describes recommendations from the Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) Task Force commissioned by the Association of Bioethics Program Directors to prioritize and strengthen anti-racist practices in bioethics programmatic endeavors and to evaluate and develop specific goals to advance REDI. (shrink)

A common occurrence in television news is the showing of graphic scenes of human suffering. It was hypothesized that viewing such scenes could be harmful to a segment of the population. A controlled experiment examined the impact of images showing victim blood inserted into into television news stories about auto accidents. The amount of blood shown was manipulated, resulting in three video versions, roughly in terms of low, medium, and high. Participants were measured beforehand on the variable of "locus of (...) control" and randomly assigned to one of the three treatment groups. Dependent variables included emotional impact and mean world syndrome. The results suggested blood shown on screen makes a difference in the perceived emotional impact of the story. Locus of control was found to be linked to mean world syndrome. The findings suggest that the quest for hardhitting news and high ratings must be tempered with the knowledge that some viewers are adversely affected by these graphic scenes of human suffering. (shrink)

Introduction by the Rev. R. J. Fletcher -- The memory of Francis Bacon. A speech delivered in Gray's Inn hall at the tercentenary celebration by Mr. H. E. Duke -- List of benchers and guests present at the tercentenary celebration, 1908 -- Francis Bacon. A speech delivered by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M. P., on the occasion of the unveiling of the Bacon statue at Gray's Inn [27th June 1912] -- Francis Bacon's essays: Of gardens and Of (...) masques and triumphs, reprinted from the earliest editions. (shrink)

This article presents evidence supporting the claim that ethical reasoning is a skill that can be taught and assessed. We propose a working definition of ethical reasoning as 1) the ability to identify, analyze, and weigh moral aspects of a particular situation, and 2) to make decisions that are informed and warranted by the moral investigation. The evidence consists of a description of an ethical reasoning education program—Ethical Reasoning in Action —designed to increase ethical reasoning skills in a variety of (...) situations and areas of life. ERiA is housed at a public, major comprehensive U.S. university—James Madison University—and assessment of the program focuses on interventions delivered prior to and during orientation for incoming first-year students. Findings indicate that the interventions measurably enhance the ability of undergraduate students to reason ethically. ERiA’s competency-targeted program and positive student learning outcomes offers a promising model for higher education ethics programs seeking to connect classroom learning in ethics to decision-making in everyday life. (shrink)

The Covid‐19 pandemic has revealed myriad social, economic, and health inequities that disproportionately burden populations that have been made medically or socially vulnerable. Inspired by state and local governments that declared racism a public health crisis or emergency, the Anti‐Racism in Public Health Act of 2020 reflects a shifting paradigm in which racism is considered a social determinant of health. Indeed, health inequities fundamentally rooted in structural racism have been exacerbated by the Covid‐19 pandemic, which calls for the integration of (...) antiracist praxis to promote ethical public health research processes. This commentary describes ways in which antiracist praxis—which emphasizes empowerment of traditionally marginalized populations—offers strategies to explicitly address power imbalance, stigmatization, and other consequences of structural racism in public health research. (shrink)

Recent national calls for ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) research to “assess and address how ethical, historical, social, economic, legal, regulatory, socio-cultural, and contextual...

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S3-S11, March‐April 2022.

Should mental health insurance cover only disorders found in DSM‐IV, or should it be extended to treatment for ordinary shyness, unhappiness, and other responses to life's hard knocks?

Current discussions of business ethics usually only consider deontological and utilitarian approaches. What is missing is a discussion of traditional teleology, often referred to as virtue ethics. While deontology and teleology are useful, they both suffer insufficiencies. Traditional teleology, while deontological in many respects, does not object to utilitarian style calculations as long as they are contained within a moral framework that is not utilitarian in its origin. It contains the best of both approaches and can be used to focus (...) on the individual''s role within an organization. More work is needed in exposing students and faculty to traditional teleology and its place in business ethic''s discussions. (shrink)

A series of topical philosophy studies aiming to publish original essays by foremost thinkers in their fields, with each volume confined to a main area of philosophical research.

If dominating functions in ω ω are adjoined repeatedly over a model of GCH via a finite-support c.c.c. iteration, then in the resulting generic extension there are no long towers, every well-ordered unbounded family of increasing functions is a scale, and the splitting number s (and hence the distributivity number h) remains at ω 1.

We study the I-ultrafilters on ω, where I is a collection of subsets of a set X, usually R or ω 1 . The I-ultrafilters usually contain the P-points, often as a small proper subset. We study relations between I-ultrafilters for various I, and closure of I-ultrafilters under ultrafilter sums. We consider, but do not settle, the question whether I-ultrafilters always exist.

The paper considers the recently published British Medical Association Guidance on ethical issues arising in relation to rationing of treatment during the COVID-19 Pandemic. It considers whether it...

Sense of agency is a compelling but fragile experience that is augmented or attenuated by internal signals and by external cues. A disruption in SoA may characterise individual symptoms of mental illness such as delusions of control. Indeed, it has been argued that generic SoA disturbances may lie at the heart of delusions and hallucinations that characterise schizophrenia. A clearer understanding of how sensorimotor, perceptual and environmental cues complement, or compete with, each other in engendering SoA may prove valuable in (...) deepening our understanding the agency disruptions that characterise certain focal neurological disorders and mental illnesses. Here we examine the integration of SoA cues in health and illness, describing a simple framework of this integration based on Bayesian principles. We extend this to consider how alterations in cue integration may lead to aberrant experiences of agency. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:166 HUME'S INTEREST IN NEWTON AND SCIENCE Many writers have been forced to examine — in their treatments of Hume's knowledge of and acquaintance with scientific theories of his day — the related questions of Hume's knowledge of and acquaintance with Isaac Newton and of the nature and extent of Newtonian influences upon Hume's thinking. Most have concluded that — in some sense — Hume was acquainted with and (...) influenced by Newton's thought in particular and scientific thought in general. The genesis of this paper is the recent point of view put forward by Peter Jones which challenges the many permutations of this almost ritualistic standard line by removing Hume entirely from the Newtonian and the scientific scenes of thought. Jones argues that Hume knew less about Newton and science, and needed to know less about Newton and 2 science, than he believes is required by the above interpretation. Indeed, Jones argues that Hume's fundamental assumptions, which, according to Jones, derive ultimately from a form of Ciceronian humanism, drive a "wedge" between Newton's thought and that of 3 Hume. Even Hume's introductory remarks in the Treatise about his universal "science of man" are, for Jones, a declaration of independence from the materialistic trend (as Jones sees it) of Newtonian 4 science and not, as so many commentators have maintained — however tenuously or strongly evidence for linkage of Hume's project with Newtonian or scientific thought. Jones baldly argues that Hume totally lacked interest in science in general and in Newton and Newtonian science in particular. Following J. H. Burton's observation that Hume's work is surprisingly free from the "opinions" of contemporary scientists, 167 Jones states there is no evidence that Hume ever studied science at the University of Edinburgh or that he "pursued" scientific studies of any formal sort. Regarding Newtonian scientific thought, he emphasizes the paucity of specifically Newtonian scientific textbooks in the early eighteenth century 7 which might have been available for Hume to study and argues that nowhere in Hume's writings is there evidence of precise and detailed knowledge of Newton's science beyond what is available in Q Chamber's Cyclopaedia. Jones acknowledges that, in the Introduction to the Treatise, Hume utilizes a "general version" of Newton's "Regulae Philosophandi" from the beginning of Book III of Newton's Principia. Nevertheless, in Jones' view, Hume's fundamentally humanistic orientation separates him completely from g any Newtonian influence. Finally, according to Jones, Hume does not betray the least bit of knowledge of Newton's mathematics and its role in Newton's experimental methodology. On this evidence Jones grounds his central claim of Hume's "total lack of interest in contemporary science." What references there are to Newton and to science in Hume's works Jones finds "traceable to essentially literary predecessors such as Fontenelle or Montesquieu, or to standard works of theologians ] 2 or free-thinkers." The absence of clearly direct references to what Jones feels are scientific works results both from Hume's "total lack of interest in science" and from his commitment to a form of Ciceronian humanism which is "inimical" to what Jones finds to be the obvious materialistic tendencies of 13 science in the early modern period. Jones' account of the Ciceronian and French contexts of Hume's thought is excellent. But his claim that Hume had no interest whatsoever in science 168 is simply too strong and finally forces us to view science in Hume's day as equivalent to science in our own time, a manifestly anachronistic point of view. Throughout this paper, my argument will be conditioned by my view that Hume's interest in science cannot be separated from his epistemology or his religious scepticism. Hume's interest in science was precisely that of a man of letters of the eighteenth century vitally engaged in determining the proper use of scientific methodology in establishing the limits of the secular science of man once it has 14 been freed from the fetters of theology. Hume's interest in theological and epistemological issues inevitably gave rise to a strong interest on his part in the science of his day and in Newton's contributions... (shrink)

Unchanging God -- Simple God -- Simple God lost -- Eternal creator -- One God, three persons.

The main thesis of this paper is that it is not possible to determine the nature of epistemic justification apart from scientific psychological investigation. I call this view the strong thesis of methodological psychologism. Two sub-theses provide the primary support for this claim. The first sub-thesis is that no account of epistemic justification is correct which requires for the possession of at least one justified belief a psychological capacity which humans do not have. That is, the correct account of epistemic (...) justification must be psychologically realistic. The second sub-thesis is that it is not possible to determine whether an account of epistemic justification is psychologically realistic apart from scientific psychological investigation. After defending these subtheses, I point out some interesting consequences of the overall thesis which present a challenge to traditional epistemology. (shrink)

It is shown that if ZF is consistent, then so is ZFC + GCH + "There is a graph with cardinality ℵ 2 and chromatic number ℵ 2 such that every subgraph of cardinality ≤ ℵ 1 has chromatic number ≤ ℵ 0 ". This partially answers a question of Erdos and Hajnal.

Let κ denote a regular uncountable cardinal and NS the normal ideal of nonstationary subsets of κ. Our results concern the well-known open question whether NS fails to be κ + -saturated, i.e., are there κ + stationary subsets of κ with pairwise intersections nonstationary? Our first observation is: Theorem. NS is κ + -saturated iff for every normal ideal J on κ there is a stationary set $A \subseteq \kappa$ such that $J = NS \mid A = \{X \subseteq (...) \kappa:X \cap A \in NS\}$ . Turning our attention to large cardinals, we extend the usual (weak) Mahlo hierarchy to define "greatly Mahlo" cardinals and obtain the following: Theorem. If κ is greatly Mahlo then NS is not κ + -saturated. Theorem. If κ is ordinal Π 1 1 -indescribable (e.g., weakly compact), ethereal (e.g., subtle), or carries a κ-saturated ideal, then κ is greatly Mahlo. Moreover, there is a stationary set of greatly Mahlo cardinals below any ordinal Π 1 1 -indescribable cardinal. These methods apply to other normal ideals as well; e.g., the subtle ideal on an ineffable cardinal κ is not κ + -saturated. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S83-S88, March‐April 2022.

What are cells? How are they related to each other and to the organism as a whole? These questions have exercised biology since Schleiden and Schwann (1838–1839) first proposed cells as the key units of structure and function of all living things. But how do we try to understand them? Through new technologies like the achromatic microscope and the electron microscope. But just as importantly, through the metaphors our culture has made available to biologists in different periods and places. These (...) two new volumes provide interesting history and philosophy of the development of cell biology. Reynolds surveys the field's changing conceptual structure by examining the varied panoply of changing metaphors used to conceptualize and explain cells – from cells as empty boxes, as building blocks, to individual organisms, to chemical factories, and through many succeeding metaphors up to one with great currency today: cells as social creatures in communication with others in their community. There is some of this approach in theVisionsedited collection as well. But this collection also includes rich material on the technologies used to visualize cells and their dialectical relationship with the epistemology of the emerging distinct discipline of cell biology. This volume centres on, but is not limited to, ‘reflections inspired by [E.V.] Cowdry's [1924 volume]General Cytology’; it benefits from a conference on the Cowdry volume as well as a 2011 Marine Biological Lab/Arizona State University workshop on the history of cell biology. (shrink)

During the post-Second World War period, Adam Smith’s moral theory was down-played and he acquired the undeserved reputation of an amoral, radical individualist. The trend in recent scholarship has been to rehabilitate him as a moral theorist and this article continues that trend. After a sketch of Smith’s moral theory, the article addresses his little-studied views on moral education. This education is important in the creation of human excellence and social stability. Smith offers a series of recommendations about the moral (...) education of the young. For him, liberal society needs moral education: some of it is to be provided privately and some is to be provided by the public. (shrink)

Parental brain responses to baby stimuli constitute a unique model to study brain-basis frameworks of emotion. Results for baby-cry and picture stimuli may fit with both locationist and psychological constructionist hypotheses. Furthermore, the utility of either model may depend on postpartum timing and relationship. Endocrine effects may also be critical for accurate models to assess mental health risk and treatment.

_Philosophical Perspectives, _an annual, aims to publish original essays by the foremost thinkers in their fields, with each volume confined to a main area of philosophical research. Original essays by the foremost thinkers and academics of philosophy discussing the philosophy of language and mind Some of the main topics include demonstratives and anaphora, meaning and naming, belief and privileged access, modality, concepts and time, and paradox.

Although computation and the science of physical systems would appear to be unrelated, there are a number of ways in which computational and physical concepts can be brought together in ways that illuminate both. This volume examines fundamental questions which connect scholars from both disciplines: is the universe a computer? Can a universal computing machine simulate every physical process? What is the source of the computational power of quantum computers? Are computational approaches to solving physical problems and paradoxes always fruitful? (...) Contributors from multiple perspectives reflecting the diversity of thought regarding these interconnections address many of the most important developments and debates within this exciting area of research. Both a reference to the state of the art and a valuable and accessible entry to interdisciplinary work, the volume will interest researchers and students working in physics, computer science, and philosophy of science and mathematics. (shrink)

In his new book, Constitutional Essentials, Frank Michelman provides a splendid elaboration and defense of ‘the constitutional theory of political liberalism’ implicit in John Rawls’s classic work, Political Liberalism. In this essay, we make some observations about what a difference 30 years makes, comparing the political and constitutional climate in which Rawls wrote and published Political Liberalism in 1993 with the climate in which Michelman wrote and published this exegesis of it. We focus on (1) changes in our circumstances of (...) pluralism, including the accentuation of polarization and unreasonable views, and (2) the simultaneous breakdown of trust in the Supreme Court authoritatively to resolve disputes concerning constitutional essentials. Throughout, we acknowledge and seek to reckon with the possibility that Michelman may have given Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy its fullest, most coherent account just at the moment when the possibility of realizing it seems to be passing. (shrink)