We propose a principle of sustainability to complement established principles used for justifying healthcare resource allocation. We argue that the application of established principles of equal treatment, need, prognosis and cost-effectiveness gives rise to what we call negative dynamics: a gradual depletion of the value possible to generate through healthcare. These principles should therefore be complemented by a sustainability principle, making the prospect of negative dynamics a further factor to consider, and possibly outweigh considerations highlighted by the other principles. We (...) demonstrate how this principle may take different forms, and show that a commitment to sustainability is supported by considerations internal to the ethical principles already guiding healthcare resource allocation. We also consider two objections. The first of these, we argue, is either based on implausible assumptions or begs the question, whereas the second can be adequately accommodated by the principle we propose. (shrink)

In Constructing the World, Chalmers seeks to articulate and defend an important epistemic accessibility thesis, the Scrutability of Truth, which is crucial to Chalmers’ rationalist approach to meaning and modality. Chapters 3 and 4 of the book are devoted to persuading us that the move from weaker to stronger forms of Scrutability is intuitively plausible. In these comments, I want to question this move. The plausibility of strong forms of Scrutability hinges on controversial views about epistemic norms for answering ‘what (...) is x?’ questions that semantic externalists have good reason to reject. (shrink)

This article argues that every performance of habit‐driven action requires attention. I begin by revisiting the conception of habit‐driven actions as reducible to automatically performed responses to stimuli. On this conception, habitual actions are a counterexample to Wayne Wu's action‐centered theory of attention. Using the biased competition model of attention, and building on findings from affective cognitive neuroscience, I challenge this position. I claim that the performance of a habitual action requires experiential history to be exerting an influence that is (...) best understood as implicit selection‐biasing. It follows from this that habit‐driven action is compatible with Wu's theory. (shrink)

Through a discussion of the socially extended mind, this paper advances the “not possible without principle” as an alternative to the social parity principle. By charging the social parity principle with reductionism about the social dimension of socially extended processes, the paper offers a new argumentative strategy for the socially extended mind that stresses its existential significance. The “not possible without principle” shows that not only is something _more_ achieved through socially located processes of knowledge building, but also that, and (...) more importantly, what is achieved is something that _would not have been possible without_ social interaction_._ The social parity principle states that the result of an activity achieved via social interaction should be assumed functionally equivalent to a solitary investigation and is characterized by multiple realisability. Contrary to the social parity principle, the “not possible without principle” holds that the result would not have been achieved without the social interaction between (at least) two agents with specific existential needs. The socially extended mind never happens in a void. This means that the "not possible without" principle should be located in real-life, affectively charged, embodied experiences of skilful interactions between agents. This fundamental conceptual change via reference to the “existential necessity” that regulates socially extended processes is necessary in order to effectively lead the socially extended mind to a truly embedded and embodied account. (shrink)

The aim of the chapter is to discuss and evaluate the epistemic role of emotions in participatory sense-making, assuming 4Ecognition as background. I first ask why could emotions be beneficial for the collective processes of knowledge, especially discussing Battaly and arguing for a conceptualisation of emotions as socially extended motivations in virtue epistemology; then, I discuss participatory sense-making, both conceptually and phenomenologically, arguing for a fundamental role played by emotions in boosting epistemic cooperation and determining the quality of social bonds. (...) I advocate their specific function in epistemic cooperation. Epistemic cooperation is what brings about the generation of a shared meaning in participatory sense-making and thus, since emotions function as socially extended motivations, they boost the relationships among the agents, bonding them to the aims of their epistemic community. (shrink)

This innovative new volume analyses the role of emotions in knowledge acquisition. It focuses on the field of philosophy of emotions at the exciting intersection between epistemology and philosophy of mind and cognitive science to bring us an in-depth analysis of the epistemological value of emotions in reasoning. With twelve chapters by leading and up-and-coming academics, this edited collection shows that emotions do count for our epistemic enterprise. Against scepticism about the possible positive role emotions play in knowledge, the authors (...) highlight the how and the why of this potential, lucidly exploring the key aspects of the functionality of emotions. This is explored in relation to: specific kinds of knowledge such as self-understanding, group-knowledge and wisdom; specific functions played by certain emotions in these cases, such as disorientation in enquiry and contempt in practical reason; the affective experience of the epistemic subjects and communities. (shrink)

Moral disengagement is the process by which individuals mitigate the consequences of their own violations of moral standards. Although MD is understood to be co-determined by culture norms, no study has yet explored the extent to which MD applied to safety at work fosters safety violations, nor the role of organizational culture as a predictor of JS-MD. The current study seeks to address this gap in the literature by examining individual- and organizational-level factors that explain why employees fail to report (...) workplace accidents. We tested a latent variable structural model positing organizational culture typologies as predictors of JS-MD, which in turn is expected to mediate the relationship with accident underreporting. Using data from 1033 employees in 28 Italian organizations, findings suggest that bureaucratic safety culture was related to lower levels of JS-MD, whereas technocratic safety culture was related to greater JS-MD. In turn, JS-MD positively predicted employee accident underreporting and fully mediated the relationship between culture and underreporting. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in light of the increasing focus on underreporting as well as the adverse individual and organizational consequences of failing to report workplace accidents. (shrink)

In qualitative interviews with a diverse group of experts, the vast majority believed unregulated researchers should seek out independent oversight. Reasons included the need for objectivity, protecting app users from research risks, and consistency in standards for the ethical conduct of research. Concerns included burdening minimal risk research and limitations in current systems of oversight. Literature and analysis supports the use of IRBs even when not required by regulations, and the need for evidence-based improvements in IRB processes.

ABSTRACTThirty years ago, the subfields of emotion and cognition operated relatively independently and the associated science reflected the tacit view that they were distinct constructs. Today, questions about the integration of cognition and emotion are among the most interesting questions in the field. I offer a personal view of the key changes that fuelled this shift over time and describe research from my group that unfolded in parallel and led to the identification of the positivity effect.

We examined disgust and fear responses to spiders in spider-distressed and nondistressed individuals. Undergraduate participants (N = 134) completed questionnaires concerning responses to spiders and other potentially aversive stimuli, as well as measures of disgust sensitivity, anxious arousal, worry, and anhedonic depression. In addition, we obtained self-report and facial expressions of disgust and fear while participants were exposed to a live tarantula. Both spider distressed and nondistressed individuals reported disgust and exhibited disgust facial expressions in response to a tarantula. Disgust (...) in response to spiders was not found to be part of a general disgust response to all negative stimuli, nor was it due to a general negative emotional response to spiders. Emotional responses to spiders were differentially associated with scores on personality and psychological functioning measures. The results of this study provide evidence that spiders have a specific disgust-evoking status in both distressed and nondistressed populations. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the relevance that emotions can play in our epistemic life considering the state of the art of the philosophical debate on emotions. The strategy is the one of focusing on the three main models on emotions as evaluative judgements, bodily feelings, and perceptions, following the fil rouge of emotion intentionality for rising questions about their epistemic functions. From this examination, a major challenge to mainstream epistemology arises, the one that asks to provide (...) prominence to the epistemic agent and to her affects. This chapter discusses these implications, also providing an overview of the many alternatives available nowadays in epistemology, arguing for an open, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary approach to emotions in knowledge. (shrink)

En sus lecciones de los años treinta, Heidegger se centra en el pensamiento de Nietzsche dado que considera que en él se ha consumado el nihilismo de la metafísica a través de la inversión de sus principios en su doble inicio platónico y cartesiano. Pero el “nihilismo impropio” de la metafísica entendido como el “olvido del ser”, es motivado a su vez por el “nihilismo propio” o “abandono del ser”. Consecuentemente Heidegger propone la “superación-sobretorsión” de la metafísica en el sentido (...) de una “torsión” del olvido del ser, camino que lo llevará a la búsqueda de un pensamiento no metafísico entendido como el “recuerdo interiorizante en la metafísica” primeramente, y seguidamente en el sentido de un pensamiento rememorante. Seguidamente la presente propuesta se detiene en la temática del “último Dios” en el horizonte de la temporalidad, donde Heidegger lo anuncia como “el último” pero en el sentido del más originario, pensado desde la dimensión del “tiempo auténtico” tetradimensional, donde lo advenidero no es lo meramente futuro, sino lo predeterminado por “lo sido”. Así se comprende la humanidad de los advenideros, un pueblo de creadores que son “los vigías del silencio del pasaje del último Dios”. (shrink)

Research ethics consultation is increasingly recognized as a potentially valuable mechanism for addressing the depth and breadth of ethical issues that arise in research related to human health and well-being. However, fundamental questions remain, including: What is “research ethics consultation”? And what is its justification beyond the purposes already served by existing entities? We examine how a research ethics consultation service may differ from or complement the role of an institutional review board by offering a definition of research ethics consultation (...) and by exploring the potential scope of a consultation service in terms of types of clients served, questions addressed, and advice provided at various stages of the research process. We then consider the relationship between research ethics consultation services and IRBs, as well as the issues that may arise between them, including possible conflicts of interest. (shrink)

Although the expression 'intellectual property' is widely used, it could be argued that the very idea of intellectual property is incoherent. After all, ideas are not like land, houses or clothing; surely they are not the sorts of things that can be owned? I shall examine two arguments - one ontological, one jurisprudential - that put pressure on the coherence of the idea of intellectual property, both leading to the conclusion that intellectual property rights are not genuine property rights, but (...) rights to monopolies. In setting up and responding to the first argument, I discuss the applicability of the type/ token distinction to intellectual property law; a distinction I also appeal to as a way of clarifying my response to the second argument. (shrink)

Prior work has found that moral values that build and bind groups—that is, the binding values of ingroup loyalty, respect for authority, and preservation of purity—are linked to blaming people who have been harmed. The present research investigated whether people's endorsement of binding values predicts their assignment of the causal locus of harmful events to the victims of the events. We used an implicit causality task from psycholinguistics in which participants read a sentence in the form “SUBJECT verbed OBJECT because…” (...) where male and female proper names occupy the SUBJECT and OBJECT position. The participants were asked to predict the pronoun that follows “because”—the referent to the subject or object—which indicates their intuition about the likely cause of the event. We also collected explicit judgments of causal contributions and measured participants' moral values to investigate the relationship between moral values and the causal interpretation of events. Using two verb sets and two independent replications (N = 459, 249, 788), we found that greater endorsement of binding values was associated with a higher likelihood of selecting the object as the cause for harmful events in the implicit causality task, a result consistent with, and supportive of, previous moral psychological work on victim blaming. Endorsement of binding values also predicted explicit causal attributions to victims. Overall, these findings indicate that moral values that support the group rather than the individual reliably predict that people shift the causal locus of harmful events to those affected by the harms. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent research suggests that impaired emotion regulation may play an important role in the development of youth psychopathology. However, little research has explored the effects of ER strategies on affect in early adolescents. In Study 1, we examined if early adolescents are able to use distraction and whether the effects of this strategy are similar to talking to one’s mother. In Study 2, we compared the effects of distraction, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination. In both studies, participants received instructions on (...) how to regulate their emotions after a standardised negative mood induction. In general, the results indicated that distraction, but also cognitive reappraisal and acceptance, had promising short-term effects on positive and negative affect in early adolescents. These findings suggest that targeting adaptive ER skills, such as distraction, acceptance, and cognitive reappraisal, may be an important strategy to prevent or treat psychological pro... (shrink)

In this article, I shall analyze Schopenhauer's conception of Buddhism in the context of the Western reception of Buddhism from the seventeenth century onwards. I will focus on Schopenhauer's notion of the Buddhist palingenesis and provide an overview of the Buddhist sources Schopenhauer read before the publication of the second edition of his main work The World as Will and Representation in 1844.

Olfaction has recently been highlighted as a sense poorly connected with language. Odor is difficult to verbalize, and it has few qualities that afford mimicry by vision or sound. At the same time, emotion is thought to be the most salient dimension of an odor, and it could therefore be an olfactory dimension more easily communicated. We investigated whether sounds imitative of an innate disgust response can be associated with unpleasant odors. In two experiments, participants were asked to make a (...) forced choice between a pseudoword including a disgust sound and a neutral pseudoword, for pleasant and unpleasant odors. Overall, participants chose more disgust pseudowords than neutral pseudowords for unpleasant odors, but this was not the case for pleasant odors. This effect was not driven by a general association between unpleasant sounds and unpleasant odors, but specifically the sounds [x/χ] and [f], thought to reflect physical responses to disgusting odors, as seen in the Polish fu! or the English ugh!. In line with growing evidence that language can encode odor, we provide the first experimental evidence for an association between the sound of a word and odor valence. (shrink)

Offensive street speech--racist and sexist remarks that can make its targets feel both psychologically and physically threatened--is surprisingly common in our society. Many argue that this speech is so detestable that it should be banned under law. But is this an area covered by the First Amendment right to free speech? Or should it be banned? In this elegantly written book, Laura Beth Nielsen pursues the answers by probing the legal consciousness of ordinary citizens. Using a combination of field (...) observations and in-depth, semistructured interviews, she surveys one hundred men and women, some of whom are routine targets of offensive speech, about how such speech affects their lives. Drawing on these interviews as well as an interdisciplinary body of scholarship, Nielsen argues that racist and sexist speech creates, reproduces, and reinforces existing systems of hierarchy in public places. The law works to normalize and justify offensive public interactions, she concludes, offering, in essence, a "license to harass." Nielsen relates the results of her interviews to statistical surveys that measure the impact of offensive speech on the public. Rather than arguing whether law is the appropriate remedy for offensive speech, she allows that the benefits to democracy, to community, and to society of allowing such speech may very well outweigh the burdens imposed. Nonetheless, these burdens, and the stories of the people who bear them, should not remain invisible and outside the debate. (shrink)

Psychiatric electroceutical interventions (PEIs) use electrical or magnetic stimulation to treat psychiatric conditions. For depression therapy, PEIs include both approved treatment modalities, such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), and experimental neurotechnologies, such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive brain implants (ABIs). We present results from a survey-based experiment in which members of four relevant stakeholder groups (psychiatrists, patients with depression, caregivers of adults with depression, and the general public) assessed whether treatment with one of (...) four PEIs (ECT, rTMS, DBS, or ABIs) was better or worse than living with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and then provided a narrative explanation for their assessment. Overall, the prevalence of many narrative themes differed substantially by stakeholder group—with psychiatrists typically offering different reasons for their assessment than non-clinicians—but much less so by PEI modality. A large majority of all participants viewed their assigned PEI as better than living with TRD, with their reasons being a mix of positive views about the treatment and negative views about TRD. The minority of all participants who viewed their assigned PEI as worse than living with TRD tended to express negative affect toward it as well as emphasize its riskiness, negative side effects, and, to a lesser extent, its invasiveness. The richness of these narrative explanations enabled us to put in context and add depth to key patterns seen in recent survey-based research on PEIs. (shrink)

This systematic review identifies and critically evaluates instruments that have been developed to measure clinical trial informed consent comprehension in non-cognitively-impaired adults. Literature searches were carried out on Medline (Ovid), PsycInfo, CINHAL, ERIC, ScienceDirect, and Cochrane Library for English language articles published between January 1980 and September 2008. Instruments were excluded if they focused on consent onto paediatric trials, the construct under study was primarily capacity or competency, or the instrument was developed specifically for psychiatric or cognitively-impaired populations. Instruments selected (...) for review were evaluated against the following criteria: (1) method of item generation; (2) type and format of test items; (3) administration and interpretation of test results; and (4) psychometric properties. Three instruments met our defined inclusion criteria: the Deaconess Informed Consent Comprehension Test (DICCT), the Quality of Informed Consent (QuIC) questionnaire and the Brief Informed Consent Protocol (BICEP). Each instrument varied in terms of content measured. Significantly, these are the first standardized instruments developed to assess comprehension in non-cognitively-impaired adults. Yet, each instrument had its own set of limitations such as the lack of generalizability and the absence of details pertaining to how test results should be used to guide clinical decision-making. Standardized clinical trial informed consent comprehension assessments have been developed to identify gaps in research participants' understanding and ensure that respect for patient autonomy is satisfied. (shrink)

The increasing role that new technologies play in intimate relationships has led to the emergence of a new form of couple violence, cyber dating abuse, especially among adolescents and young adults. Although this phenomenon has received increased attention, no research has investigated predictors of cyber dating abuse taking into account the interdependence of the two partners. The study examines adverse childhood experiences and early maladaptive schemas as possible predictors of young adults’ perpetrated and suffered cyber dating abuse. Adopting a dyadic (...) approach, mediational models in which adverse childhood experiences were assumed to be related to individual and partner’s cyber dating abuse through individual early maladaptive schemas were tested. 134 couples completed online self-reports of the variables of interest, including a bidimensional measure of cyber dating abuse assessing pressure-aggression and control-monitoring. Actor-partner interdependence mediation model analyses were conducted. Results indicated that the emotional deprivation schema mediated the association between adverse childhood experiences and cyber dating abuse, whereas the abandonment schema did not. Specifically, more frequent experiences of emotional abuse and physical neglect during childhood were indirectly related to increased likelihood of perpetrating cyber dating pressure-aggression as well as of perpetrating and suffering cyber dating control-monitoring in both males and females. These associations were mediated by a stronger internalization of the emotional deprivation schema and were supported by both self-reported and partner-reported data. Also, a strong and direct association was found between childhood exposure to intimate partner violence by the opposite-sex parent and cyber dating pressure-aggression by females or control-monitoring by both males and females. These findings help to clarify the potential negative effects of specific adverse childhood experiences and early maladaptive schemas on the tendency to perpetrate and suffer cyber abuse in romantic relationships. The implications for prevention and treatment programs are noted and avenues for future research are described. (shrink)

This paper explores the gendering of civil society by focusing on the moral campaigns against wet nursing and in favour of maternal feeding in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, drawing attention to the overlap between the family and market society. It argues that the organization of sexual difference is central to the social world and to the idea of civil society in Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Men enjoyed the benefits of ethical incorporation into a rich version of civil (...) society and withheld worth from women's participation in the market. Women who immersed themselves in the world of exchange were stigmatized as mercenaries and freelance hustlers, so that they could not achieve ethical incorporation except as natural mothers in the nether world of the family. (shrink)

A sociologist examines contemporary engagements of queer bodies and identities with fertility biomedicine. Drawing on social science, media culture, and the author’s own empirical research, three questions frame the analysis: 1. In what ways have queers on the gendered margins moved into the center and become implicated or central users of biomedicine’s fertility offerings? 2. In what ways is Fertility Inc. transformed by its own incorporation of various gendered and queered bodies and identities? And 3. What are the biosocial and (...) bioethical implications of expanded queer engagements and possibilities with Fertility Inc.? The author argues that “patient” activism through web 2.0 coupled with a largely unregulated free-market of assisted reproduction has included various queer identities as “parents-in-waiting.” Such inclusions raise a set of ethical tensions regarding how to be accountable to the many people implicated in this supply and demand industry. (shrink)

To examine whether anticipatory attention or expectancy is a cognitive process that is automatic or requires conscious control, we employed a paired-stimulus event-related potential paradigm during the transition to sleep. The slow negative ERP wave observed between two successive stimuli, the Contingent Negative Variation , reflects attention and expectancy to the second stimulus. Thirteen good sleepers were instructed to respond to the second stimulus in a pair during waking sessions. In a non-response paradigm modified for sleep, participants then fell asleep (...) while tones played. As expected, N1 decreased and P2 increased in amplitude systematically with the loss of consciousness at sleep onset; the CNV was increasingly more positive. Sleep onset latency was correlated with the amplitude of the CNV. The systematic attenuation of the CNV waveform at sleep onset and its absence in sleep indicates that anticipatory attention requires endogenous conscious control. (shrink)

In his Letter on the Blind, Denis Diderot describes, based on mathematical physics, a method for evaluating hypotheses in situations where certainty cannot be reached. This article's thesis is that the author of the Letter extends this method to metaphysical questions of finalism and idealism. Diderot presents each pair of antagonistic positions (finalism-antifinalism and idealism-realism) in such a way that readers are invited to carefully weigh the arguments and to choose the one that appears to be the best, or most (...) probable, position. (shrink)

This article reports the results of an experiment involving 108 college students with varying backgrounds in biology. Subjects answered questions about the evolutionary history of sets of hominid and equine taxa. Each set of taxa was presented in one of three diagrammatic formats: a noncladogenic diagram found in a contemporary biology textbook or a cladogram in either the ladder or tree format. As predicted, the textbook diagrams, which contained linear components, were more likely than the cladogram formats to yield explanations (...) of speciation as an anagenic process, a common misconception among students. In contrast, the branching cladogram formats yielded more appropriate explanations concerning levels of ancestry than did the textbook diagrams. Although students with stronger backgrounds in biology did better than those with weaker biology backgrounds, they generally showed the same effects of diagrammatic format. Implications of these results for evolution education and for diagram design more generally are discussed. (shrink)

This article investigates the relation between freedom, the public use of reason, and sensus communis, as discussed throughout Kant’s political writings and critical works. Kant’s discussion of the public use of reason, as put forth in "What Is Enlightenment?" is closely tied to his views on autonomy, most notably in the political sphere. However, Kant’s distinction between the public and private uses of reason relies upon sensus communis as discussed in the Critique of Judgment. The communicability achieved by sensus communis (...) has a relevance not restricted only to Kant’s explicitly political writings; sensus communis is also what we might call “transcendentally significant.” In this article, I argue that the public use of reason—a use of reason achieved by sensus communis—is vital for reason itself to follow its own normative demands. I conclude that sensus communis itself grounds reason’s use for its own critique. (shrink)