Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Based on an experiential dream series this consciousness study shapes a theory that the fragmentary nature of dreams seeks wholeness deriving from the Collective Unconscious. As dreams evolve from a microscopic-personal worldview to a macroscopic-transpersonal dimension, concern for survival of self is augmented with concern for survival of the species. Entangled dream imagery provides cues to quantum functions actualized through the tutelage of departed scientific luminaries. The intentionality, specificity, and information input (...) experienced in the communications imply that the collective unconscious and quantum cognition are an integrated structure revealing an underlying methodology. (shrink)

Ethical issues in physician-industry and academia-industry relationships have focused largely on the financial nature of these relationships. It took very little time after solutions to transparenc...

The meaningful consideration of cultural practices, values and beliefs is a necessary component in the effective translation of advancements in neuroscience to clinical practice and public discourse. Society’s immense investment in biomedical science and technology, in conjunction with an increasingly diverse socio-cultural landscape, necessitates the study of how potential discoveries in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer disease are perceived and utilized across cultures. Building on the work of neuroscientists, ethicists and philosophers, we argue that the growing field of neuroethics provides (...) a pragmatic and constructive pathway to guide advancements in neuroscience in a manner that is culturally nuanced and relevant. Here we review a case study of one issue in culturally oriented neuroscience research where it is evident that traditional research ethics must be broadened and the values and needs of diverse populations considered for meaningful and relevant research practices. A global approach to neuroethics has the potential to furnish critical engagement with cultural considerations of advancements in neuroscience. (shrink)

Business and society researchers, as well as practitioners, have been critiqued for ignoring those with less voice and power often referred to as “fringe stakeholders.” Existing methods used in B&S research often fail to address issues of meaningful participation, voice and power, especially in developing countries. In this article, we stress the utility of visual participatory research methods in B&S research to fill this gap. Through a case study on engaging Ghanaian cocoa farmers on gender inequality issues, we explore how (...) VPR methods may be used by researchers to achieve more inclusive, and thus more credible, stakeholder research that can improve decision making within businesses. Furthermore, we argue that ingrained social and environmental problems tackled by B&S research and the unique context in which they occur may open up new opportunities to develop participatory visual methods for social change. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the debate that surrounds “pragmatic” interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein. By this, I mean the debate between those who read Wittgenstein as a pragmatist or as having pragmatic affinities and those who object to this reading.In particular, drawing on Hilary Putnam’s lecture “Was Wittgenstein a Pragmatist?” and Stanley Cavell’s response “What’s the Use of Calling Emerson a Pragmatist?,” I will spell out the similarities seen between Wittgenstein and pragmatism as well as the divergences emphasized between (...) the two. I will argue that the teasing out of the similarities and the teasing out of the differences is important to a) having a clearer understanding of both Wittgenstein and pragmatism; b) showing elements that make twentieth century philosophy unique; and c) shedding light on where philosophy is now, what issues and questions are being raised, and what possible solutions and answers are being offered. (shrink)

Learning about a scientific concept often occurs in the context of unfamiliar examples. Mutual alignment analogy ? a type of analogical comparison in which the analogues are only partially understood ? has been shown to facilitate learning from unfamiliar examples . In the present study, we examined the role of mutual alignment analogy in the abstraction and transfer of a complex scientific concept from examples presented in expository texts. Our results provide evidence that (a) promoting comparison between two examples and (...) (b) orienting the learner toward relational commonalities result in greater abstraction and transfer. These findings suggest that mutual alignment analogy is an effective means of promoting abstraction and transfer of complex scientific concepts, and may thus be used in the classroom to promote learning from unfamiliar examples. (shrink)

Women’s health activists laid the groundwork for passage of the law that created the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1906. The pharmaceutical and food industries fought regulatory reforms then and continue to do so now. We examine public health activism in the Progressive Era, the postwar era and the present day. The women’s health movement began in the 1960s, and criticized both the pharmaceutical industry and the medical establishment. In the 1990s, patient advocacy groups began accepting industry funds; thousands (...) of commercially-funded groups now dominate the advocacy landscape. As pharma funding became normalized, concerns arose regarding a) the lack of transparency and public accountability regarding funding, b) the distortion of groups’ agendas, and c) the ability of pharma-funded groups to dominate the discourse and override less well-resourced patient and health advocacy groups. Although industry-funded groups argue that funding allows them to provide useful services, the trade-off in health risks, exorbitant prices and distorted information is far too high. Sincerity is beside the point; patients and the industry have differing interests when it comes to drug safety and efficacy, drug information and drug prices. A growing resistance movement is asserting the values of its activist predecessors and opposing the prevailing culture of pharma-funded advocacy. (shrink)

OBJECTIVE: To describe the issues faced, and how they were addressed, by the University of Toronto Critical Care Medicine Program/Joint Centre for Bioethics Task Force on Appropriate Use of Life-Sustaining Treatment. The clinical problem addressed by the Task Force was dealing with requests by patients or substitute decision makers for life-sustaining treatment that their healthcare providers believe is inappropriate. DESIGN: Case study. SETTING: The University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics/Critical Care Medicine Program Task Force on Appropriate Use of Life-Sustaining (...) Treatment. PARTICIPANTS: The 24-member Task Force included physician and nursing leaders from five critical care units, bioethicists, a legal scholar, a health administration expert, a social worker, and a hospital public relations professional. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Our specific lessons learned include a) a policy focus on process; b) use of a negotiation and mediation model, rather than a hospital ethics committee model, for this process; and c) the policy development process is itself a negotiation, so we recommend equal involvement of interested groups including patients, families, and the public. CONCLUSIONS: This article describes the key issues faced by the Task Force while developing its policy. It will provide a useful starting point for other groups developing policy on appropriate use of life-sustaining treatment. (shrink)

Van Fraassen's Judy Benjamin problem asks how one ought to update one's credence in A upon receiving evidence of the sort ``A may or may not obtain, but B is k times likelier than C'', where {A,B,C} is a partition. Van Fraassen's solution, in the limiting case of increasing k, recommends a posterior converging to the probability of A conditional on A union B, where P is one's prior probability function. Grove and Halpern, and more recently Douven and Romeijn, (...) have argued that one ought to leave credence in A unchanged, i.e. fixed at P(A). We argue that while the former approach is superior, it brings about a Reflection violation due in part to neglect of a ``regression to the mean'' phenomenon, whereby when C is eliminated by random evidence that leaves A and B alive, the ratio P(A):P(B) ought to drift in the direction of 1:1. (shrink)

Bovens (2010) points out that there is a structural analogy between the Judy Benjamin problem (JB) and the Sleeping Beauty problem (SB). On grounds of this structural analogy, he argues that both should receive the same solution, viz. the posterior probability of the eastern region of the matrix in Table 1 should equal 1/3. Hence, P*(Red) = 1/3 in the JB and P*(Heads) = 1/3 in the SB. Bovens’s argument rests on a standard error in implementing Bayesian updating, which (...) is spelled out in Shafer 1985. When we are informed of some proposition, we do not only learn the proposition in question, but also that we have learned the proposition as one of the many propositions that we might have learned. The information is generated by a protocol, which determines the various propositions that we might learn. We should then update not on the proposition in question, but rather on the fact that we learned this proposition as one of the many propositions that we might have learned. A well-known application of this insight is the Monty Hall problem (MH) as Speed (1985: 276) points out in a discussion of Shafer 1985. As an illustration, let us apply Shafer’s insight to the MH. In the MH, the contestant in a game show learns that there is a goat behind two of three doors X, Y and Z and a car behind one door. She is asked to pick one of the three doors. The contestant picks door X. Monty will then open one of the remaining doors, which he knows to have a goat behind it. Suppose Monty opens door Y. The contestant is then asked whether she wants to …. (shrink)

Against those who contend that there is a basic duality between the moral and the non-moral good, or the right and the good, I articulate a form of realism that works with a unified conception of the good in which virtue and benefit are key concepts, and in which the “moral good” is not foundationally distinctive, but explicable in terms of the good for human beings. I argue: (a) that virtuous actions are such because and insofar as they (actually or (...) potentially) protect, preserve, secure, or promote the good for human beings, and (b) that being appropriately responsive to the good for human beings is (at least part of) what it is to be a virtuous person, where this form of responsiveness can itself be shown to be good for the one who is so. My proposal is one way of developing a schema for the relationship between virtue and the beneficial that is variously developed by Philippa Foot and Judy Thomson. The schema is that virtues are ways of doing and being that are necessary because and insofar as some human good hangs on them. (shrink)

This book takes a bold new look at ways of exploring the nature, origins, and potentials of consciousness within the context of science and religion.

Stephen Law’s evil-god challenge is the argument that since an evil god is just as likely as the God of theism, there is no reason to believe that theism is true over believing there is a god who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnimalevolent. There have been several attempts to answer the challenge, but recently John Collins has defended the evil-god challenge and also extended the argument past Law’s original formulation. In this article, I defend the classical theism of Thomas Aquinas (...) against the evil-god challenge. In particular, I explain how Aquinas’s theodicy involving God’s goodness and Aquinas’s privation view of evil avoid the challenge. (shrink)

Searle has recently used two adaptations of his Chinese room argument in an attack on connectionism. I show that these new forms of the argument are fallacious. First I give an exposition of and rebuttal to the original Chinese room argument, and then a brief introduction to the essentials of connectionism.

Complex constraints like conditionals ('If A, then B') and probabilistic constraints ('The probability that A is p') pose problems for Bayesian theories of learning. Since these propositions do not express constraints on outcomes, agents cannot simply conditionalize on the new information. Furthermore, a natural extension of conditionalization, relative information minimization, leads to many counterintuitive predictions, evidenced by the sundowners problem and the Judy Benjamin problem. Building on the notion of a `paradigm shift' and empirical research in psychology and economics, (...) I argue that the model of hypothesis testing can explain how people learn complex, theory-laden propositions like conditionals and probability constraints. Theories are formalized as probability distributions over a set of possible outcomes and theory change is triggered by a constraint which is incompatible with the initial theory. This leads agents to consult a higher order probability function, or a 'prior over priors,' to choose the most likely alternative theory which satisfies the constraint. The hypothesis testing model is applied to three examples: learning a simple probabilistic constraint involving coin bias, the sundowners problem for conditional learning, and the Judy Benjamin problem for learning conditional probability constraints. (shrink)