Bioethics, and indeed much ethicalwriting generally, makes its point throughnarratives. The religious parable no less thanthe medical teaching case uses a simple storyto describe appropriate action or theapplication of a critical principle. Whilepowerful, the telling story has limits. In thispaper the authors describe a simple teachingcase on ``end-of-life'' decision making that wasill received by its audience. The authors ill-receivedexample, involving the disconnection ofventilation in a patient with ALS (Lou Gherig'sDisease) was critiqued by audience members withlong-term experience as ventilation users. Inthis (...) case, the supposedly simple narrative ofthe presenters conflicted with the lifehistories of the audience. The lessons of thisstory, and the conflict that resulted, speakcritically to the limits of simple teachingcases as well as the strengths of narrativeanalysis as a tool for the exploration ofbioethical case histories. (shrink)

The way in which medical professionals engage in bioethical issues ultimately reflects the type of care such patients are likely to receive. It is therefore critical for doctors and other health care professionals to have a broad understanding of disability. Our purpose in this paper is to explore ways of teaching bioethical issues to first year medical students by integrating alternative approaches. Such approaches include (a) the use of the narrative format, (b) the inclusion of a disability perspective, and (c) (...) the presentation and facilitation of classes by people with disabilities. We consider how these new kinds of presentations are evaluated by students, faculty, people with disabilities and professional ethicists. We hope new knowledge may provide health care professionals with a greater understanding of the perspectives of patients with disabilities, who are confronted by conflicting ethical values and frameworks for decision-making in their interaction with such professionals. (shrink)

This monograph consists of five parts: (1) introductory material including a conference overview; (2) papers presented at an international symposium on the topic of ethical issues in disability and rehabilitation as a section of the Annual Conference of the Society for Disability Studies; (3) responses to the symposium, prepared by four of the participants; (4) selected additional papers which offer views from perspectives or cultures not represented at the Denver conference; and (5) an annotated international bibliography. Representatives from 10 countries (...) discussed ethical issues and decision making in disability and rehabilitation. Conference papers include: "Genetic Engineering--The New Eugenics? Evolving Medical Attitudes towards the Quality of Life" (Hugh Gallagher);"Description of the Decision-Making Project" (Daryl Evans); "Treatment and Nontreatment Decisions with Respect to Extremely Premature, Very Low Birthweight Infants (500-750g)" (Ernle Young); "Allocation of Resources and Distributive Justice" (John Mather); "Quality Assurance as an Aid to Ethical Decision Making in Disability Management: Lessons from Recent Ethical Issues Involving Disadvantaged Groups in New Zealand" (Peter Gow); "Disability and Ethical Issues: A Point of View from the Netherlands" (Yolan Koster-Dreese); "Who Shall Live or How Shall They Live? Consumer and Professional Perspectives on Treatment/Non-Treatment Decisions" (Joseph Kaufert and Patricia Kaufert); and "Debates across Social Movements on Reproductive Technologies, Genetic Engineering, and Eugenics" (Theresia Degener). Conference commentaries include: "The Meeting of Disability and Bioethics: A Beginning Rapprochement" (Adrienne Asch); "A Plea for More Dialogue: Commentary on Ethics Conference" (Robert Slater); "Healing Our Wounds" (Martha Lentz Walker); "Theories and Values: Ethics and Contrasting Perspectives on Disability" (Harlan Hahn); and "Current Example of Ethical Dilemma" (Susan Lacetti). Selected additional papers include: "High-tech Medicine Is Basic Care" (Frederick Abrams); "Prevention of Disabilities as a Medical Question" (G. Schioler); "The Ethics of Disability Prevention: A Parent's Point of View" (Mrs. J. Baker); "A Reference Matrix for Issues of Life and Personhood" (Mike Miles); "Nazi Scientists and Ethics of Today" (Isabel Wilkerson); "Ethical and Policy Issues in Rehabilitation Medicine (Hastings Center Report)" (Arthur Caplan et al.); and "Differing Approaches to Prevention of Disability and Treatment of Impaired Infants Creates Controversies Worldwide" (Barbara Duncan). (JDD). (shrink)

Climate models calibrated exclusively with observations from the 19th through 21st centuries are unsuitable for assessing many important hypotheses about the future. Many systems in the modern climate are expected to cross dynamic thresholds in the near future, requiring more than the instrumental record for adequate calibration. In this paper I argue that paleoclimate analogues from earth’s past can mitigate this threshold problem, even if the modern climate exhibits features that make it historically unique. While this requires that paleoclimatologists be (...) increasingly discriminate in the past systems they target for modern analogues, the upshot is a practice of climate model construction that improves the reliability of future projections. All of this is achieved by integrating features of past climate systems discovered by the study of earth deep in the past. My analysis synthesizes important empirical work done by climate modelers and paleoclimatologists with relevant philosophical work on analogical reasoning in science. (shrink)

The thesis of the present volume is critical and dual. (1) Present day philosophy of man and sciences of man suffer from the Greek mis taken polarization of everything human into nature and convention which is (allegedly) good and evil, which is (allegedly) truth and fal sity, which is (allegedly) rationality and irrationality, to wit, the polar ization of all fields of inquiry, the natural and social sciences, as well as ethics and all technology, whether natural or social, into the (...) totally positive and the totally negative. (2) Almost all philosophy and sci ences of man share the erroneous work ethic which is the myth of man's evil nature - the myth of the beast in man, the doctrine of original sin. To mediate or to compromise between the first view of human nature as good with the second view of it as evil, sociologists have devised a modified utilitarianism with deferred gratification so called, and the theory of the evil of artificial competition (capitalist and socialist alike) and of keeping up with the Joneses. Now, the mediation is not necessary. For, the polarization makes for abstract errors which are simplistic views of rationality, such as reductionism and positivism of all sorts, as well as for concrete errors, such as the disposition to condemn repeatedly those human weaknesses which are inevitable, namely man's inability to be perfectly rational, avoid all error, etc. , thus setting man against himself as all too wicked. (shrink)

This volume is focused on understanding a key idea in modern semantics-direct reference-and its integration into a general semantics for natural language.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

In this essay, we examine the use of resting state fMRI data for psychological inferences. We argue that resting state studies hold the paired promises of discovering novel functional brain networks, and of avoiding some of the limitations of task-based fMRI. However, we argue that the very features of experimental design that enable resting state fMRI to support exploratory science also generate a novel confound. We argue that seemingly key features of resting state functional connectivity networks may be artefacts resulting (...) from sampling a ‘mixture distribution’ of diverse brain networks active at different times during the scan. We explore the consequences of this ‘mixture view’ for attempts to theorize about the cognitive or psychological functions of resting state networks, as well as the value of exploratory experiments. (shrink)

I propose to analyze the concept of basing beliefs on reasons. The concept is an important one in understanamg the so-called "inferential" or "indirect" knowledge. After briefly stating the causal analyses of this concept given by D.M. Armstrong and Marshall Swain I will present two cases which show these analyses to be too strong and too weak. Finally, I will propose an analysis which avoids these twin difficulties.

Applications of artificial intelligence/machine learning in health care are dynamic and rapidly growing. One strategy for anticipating and addressing ethical challenges related to AI/ml for health care is patient and public involvement in the design of those technologies – often referred to as ‘co-design’. Co-design has a diverse intellectual and practical history, however, and has been conceptualized in many different ways. Moreover, AI/ml introduces challenges to co-design that are often underappreciated. Informed by perspectives from critical data studies and critical digital (...) health studies, we review the research literature on involvement in health care, and involvement in design, and examine the extent to which co-design as commonly conceptualized is capable of addressing the range of normative issues raised by AI/ml for health care. We suggest that AI/ml technologies have amplified and modified existing challenges related to patient and public involvement, and created entirely new challenges. We outline three pitfalls associated with co-design for ethical AI/ml for health care and conclude with suggestions for addressing these practical and conceptual challenges. (shrink)

Most causal discovery algorithms in the literature exploit an assumption usually referred to as the Causal Faithfulness or Stability Condition. In this paper, we highlight two components of the condition used in constraint-based algorithms, which we call “Adjacency-Faithfulness” and “Orientation- Faithfulness.” We point out that assuming Adjacency-Faithfulness is true, it is possible to test the validity of Orientation- Faithfulness. Motivated by this observation, we explore the consequence of making only the Adjacency-Faithfulness assumption. We show that the familiar PC algorithm has (...) to be modified to be correct under the weaker, Adjacency-Faithfulness assumption. The modified algorithm, called Conservative PC (CPC), checks whether Orientation- Faithfulness holds in the orientation phase, and if not, avoids drawing certain causal conclusions the PC algorithm would draw. Howtion: ever, if the stronger, standard causal Faith-. (shrink)

In 'A Puzzle about Belief' Saul Kripke appeals to a principle of disquotation that allows us to infer a person's beliefs from the sentences to which she assents (in certain conditions). Kripke relies on this principle in constructing some famous puzzle cases, which he uses to defend the Millian view that the sole semantic function of a proper name is to refer to its bearer. The examples are meant to undermine the anti-Millian objection, grounded in traditional Frege-cases, that truth-value is (...) not always maintained when co-referential names are intersubstituted in belief reports. I argue here that our disquotational practice is sensitive to certain shifts in conversational context, and it is only if we overlook these shifts - if we 'misdisquote' - that we can draw the conclusions Kripke wants to draw from his examples. In the wake of this conclusion, I provide a 'contextualist' treatment of Kripke's puzzle cases. I show how this treatment is motivated by certain norms of rationality, and I defend these norms against an intriguing 'anti-Cartesian' theory of mind. Throughout the paper, I develop the larger implications that my treatment of Kripke's argument has for the semantic theory of names and belief reports, and, more generally, for our picture of the relation between linguistic behaviour and our states of mind. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Ahead of Print.

Autobiographical essays can be an indulgence. Often self-congratulatory and low on self-reflection, they seldom serve a purpose other than to stoke nostalgia. So when given this opportunity to write about my life in medicine and bioethics, I decided I would take stock, and not simply celebrate whatever accomplishments I might have had. Rather, I would use this opportunity to look for themes that linked the decades together. My hope was that the process might assemble the mosaic that has been my (...) life into a discernible pattern that could only be seen from a distance, and from the vantage of historical reflection. Maybe, if I was lucky, past would be prologue, and I would learn something that might help me script the... (shrink)

ספר ויקרא, או תורת כוהנים, נראה היום פחות מעניין מאשר ספרי-קודש אחרים, כי הוא ספר מצוות - הוא כולל כארבעים אחוז מכל תרי"ג המצוות - ואף במידה רבה מצוות שאינן בתוקף מאז חורבן בית-המקדש. אך יש בו עניין, שכן הוא מוכר כספר השלם ביותר מבחינת סגנונו ותכנו, ואולי אף בכך שעריכתו כנראה עתיקה ביותר - לא לדעת דון יצחק אברבנאל, שכן הוא לא הטיל בספק כי תורה נתנה למשה מפי הגבורה - אמנם לא בסיני אך בכל-זאת למשה מפי הגבורה. החוקרים (...) המתעלמים מדעה זו.. (shrink)

To adequately model mathematical arguments the analyst must be able to represent the mathematical objects under discussion and the relationships between them, as well as inferences drawn about these objects and relationships as the discourse unfolds. We introduce a framework with these properties, which has been used to analyse mathematical dialogues and expository texts. The framework can recover salient elements of discourse at, and within, the sentence level, as well as the way mathematical content connects to form larger argumentative structures. (...) We show how the framework might be used to support computational reasoning, and argue that it provides a more natural way to examine the process of proving theorems than do Lamport’s structured proofs. (shrink)

There have been two major lines of research aimed at capturing resource-bounded players in game theory. The first, initiated by Rubinstein (), charges an agent for doing costly computation; the second, initiated by Neyman (), does not charge for computation, but limits the computation that agents can do, typically by modeling agents as finite automata. We review recent work on applying both approaches in the context of decision theory. For the first approach, we take the objects of choice in a (...) decision problem to be Turing machines, and charge players for the “complexity” of the Turing machine chosen (e.g., its running time). This approach can be used to explain well-known phenomena like first-impression-matters biases (i.e., people tend to put more weight on evidence they hear early on) and belief polarization (two people with different prior beliefs, hearing the same evidence, can end up with diametrically opposed conclusions) as the outcomes of quite rational decisions. For the second approach, we model people as finite automata, and provide a simple algorithm that, on a problem that captures a number of settings of interest, provably performs optimally as the number of states in the automaton increases. (shrink)

The primary aim of a theory of consciousness is to articulate existence conditions for conscious states, i.e. the conditions under which a mental state is conscious rather than unconscious. There are two main broad approaches: The Higher-Order approach and the First-Order approach. Higher-Order theories claim that a mental state is conscious only if it is the object of a suitable state of higher-order awareness. First-Order theories reject this necessary condition. However, both sides make the following claim: for any mental state (...) M of a subject S, M is conscious if there is something it is like for S to be in M. This is the Nagelian Conception of consciousness. Taking the Nagelian Conception as a starting point, I contend that the best rationalizing explanation for the ways in which Higher-Order and First-Order theorists contribute to their dispute is to see those contributions as consistent responses to two distinct questions. (shrink)

The recent push to extend physician-aid-in-dying (PAD) to psychiatric conditions has significantly altered the ethical landscape surrounding psychiatric judgments concerning treatment-refractory il...

If we can save the lives of only one of multiple groups of people, we might be inclined simply to save whichever group is largest. We may worry, though, that automatically saving the largest group fails to take each saveable individual sufficiently into account, offering some of these individuals no chance at all of being rescued. Still wanting to give larger groups higher chances of survival, we may then say that we ought to employ a proportionally weighted lottery to determine (...) which group to save. In this paper, I argue that this would be a mistake. Given the most plausible way of specifying it, the weighted-lottery view itself fails to treat each saveable individual with equal moral respect. (shrink)

Critics of the scope problem that motivates pluralism about truth have argued that it is a pseudo-problem. If the criticism is correct, then truth pluralism is left unmotivated and potentially bankrupt. In this paper, I argue that closely related to the scope problem is another problem, which I call “the scalar problem.” If the property of truth is sensitive to how an agent expresses the truth predicate within a single linguistic discourse and different agents or groups of agents express truth (...) differently within that discourse, then there are different ways of being true within the same linguistic discourse. Given this possibility, even if the scope problem fails, truth pluralism remains fully motivated. (shrink)

Concerned researchers of online forums might implement what Bruckman (2002) referred to as disguise. Heavy disguise, for example, elides usernames and rewords quoted prose so that sources are difficult to locate via search engines. This can protect users (who might be members of vulnerable populations, including minors) from additional harms (such as harassment or additional identification). But does disguise work? I analyze 22 Reddit research reports: 3 of light disguise, using verbatim quotes, and 19 of heavier disguise, using reworded phrases. (...) I test if their sources can be located via three different search services (i.e., Reddit, Google, and RedditSearch). I also interview 10 of the reports’ authors about their sourcing practices, influences, and experiences. Disguising sources is effective only if done and tested rigorously; I was able to locate all of the verbatim sources (3/3) and many of the reworded sources (11/19). There is a lack of understanding, among users and researchers, about how online messages can be located, especially after deletion. Researchers should conduct similar site-specific investigations and develop practical guidelines and tools for improving the ethical use of online sources. (shrink)

Philosophers wanted commonsense to fight skepticism. They hypostasized and destroyed it. Commonsense is skeptical--Bound by a sense of proportion and of limitation. A scarce commodity, At times supported, At times transcended by science, Commonsense has to be taken account of by the critical-Realistic theory of science. James clerk maxwell's view of today's science as tomorrow's commonsense is the point of departure. It is wonderful but overlooks the value of the sense of proportion.

A technological revolution with first order implications is undeniable and underway. That is the permeation of society by computers and telecommunications technology. For western society, committed to a social, economic, and value structure premised upon an industrial society, the move to an information society is more than disruptive; it is transformational. Current changes are so rapidly paced in relation to business planning that it creates major challenges and opportunities to reach out, influence, and guide the change.The telematics revolution will affect (...) every aspect of our society since it will affect every aspect of our world which involves the generation, production, storage, or handling of information. Many ethical issues are touched upon. To sum them up, the new immorality is to choose to act in ignorance of future consequences. (shrink)

The rapidly changing field of genetics affects society through advances in health-care and through implications of genetic research. This study addresses the impacts of new genetic discoveries and technologies on different segments of today's society. The book begins with a chapter on genetic complexity, and subsequent chapters discuss moral and ethical questions arising from today's genetics from the perspectives of health care professionals, the media, the general public, special interest groups and commercial interests.

Patients who are imminently dying sometimes experience symptoms refractory to traditional palliative interventions, and in rare cases, continuous sedation is offered. Samuel H. LiPuma, in a recent article in this Journal, argues that continuous sedation until death is equivalent to physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia based on a higher brain neocortical definition of death. We contest his position that continuous sedation involves killing and offer four objections to the equivalency thesis. First, sedation practices are proportional in a way that physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia is not. (...) Second, continuous sedation may not entirely abolish consciousness. Third, LiPuma’s particular version of higher brain neocortical death relies on an implausibly weak construal of irreversibility—a position that is especially problematic in the case of continuous sedation. Finally, we explain why continuous sedation until death is not functionally equivalent to neocortical death and, hence, physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia. Concluding remarks review the differences between these two end-of-life practices. (shrink)

I would like to share some reflections on how bioethics fosters dialogue between the sciences and humanities by talking a bit about my work as a physician-ethicist collaborating with neuroscientists studying severe brain injury and mechanisms of recovery. If I am successful in this Pilgrim's Progress, I hope I will convince you that the injured brain can teach us much about ourselves. It is not something I was prepared to believe as a medical student, when I was more certain of (...) things than I am now. (shrink)

This book is a first attempt to cover the whole area of aesthetics from the point of view of critical rationalism. It takes up and expands upon the more narrowly focused work of E. H. Gombrich, Sheldon Richmond, and Raphael Sassower and Louis Ciccotello. The authors integrate the arts into the scientific world view and acknowledge that there is an aesthetic aspect to anything whatsoever. They pay close attention to the social situatedness of the arts. Their aesthetics treats art as (...) emerging from craft in the form of luxurious and playful challenge to the audience. In developing it they place emphasis on the number of questions and claims that can be settled by appeal to empirical facts; on the historical character of aesthetic judgements; and on the connection of aesthetic truth to true love and true friendship, i.e. fidelity and integrity, not to informative truth. (shrink)

Abstract:In this essay, I explore the recent cultural and epistemological turns in sociological music education research. Changes in the economy—and most specifically in the modes of production aided by changes in technology—provide a frame for understanding the cultural and epistemological turns within music education research in sociology. The economy has gone through a process of “dematerialization,” privileging non-material aspects—like mental conceptions of the world, symbols, culture, and social processes—over material considerations. Similarly, sociological research in music education, in its epistemological and (...) cultural turns, has gone through a process of dematerialization where symbols, culture, and mental conceptions have become the frames and emphases within music education. This is influenced by “the postmodern condition” where ideas and “culture” have become seats of power. After a brief introduction, I review dialectics, moving to the subcategory dialectical materialism which has come to signify Marx’s contribution to dialectics. Next, I apply dialectical materialism to the cultural and epistemological turns in sociological music education research, tracing changes in the economy and their influence over emphases in sociological research in music education. Finally, I pose some questions that may inform future philosophical and sociological research and practice in music education. (shrink)