By the time George Wilton Field concluded his work at the marine laboratory his initial scientific concerns had forced him directly into local politics. He pleaded with little success with the community of South Kingstown, and with no success with the town of Narragansett, to create and maintain a permanent breach:Is it not possible for the acute business sense and the broad philanthropy of the community to sweep aside petty, local, and personal jealousies which are now blocking practical progress for (...) the establishment of a permanent breach at Point Judith Pond? It is truly criminal neglect which permits fifteen hundred acres of valuable water-farming area to lie practically idle and rapidly deteriorate with each passing year.... In the opinion of the writer the Point Judith Pond and those of similar type could be made the seat of oyster, clam, crab, herring, white perch, and striped bass fisheries.30In the summer of 1899 Field was invited to teach a summer course on echinoderms at the MBL in Woods Hole, and to conduct summer research in a laboratory of the U.S. Fish Commission, also located at Woods Hole. When the summer was over, he remained there. Whether he had intentions of returning to resume his position in Rhode Island is unclear. At this point all correspondence with the Agricultural Experiment Station ceases, and Field's last report is a brief statement in the annual report of the experiment station for 1900 wherein he laments the variety of experiments he has not been able to carry to conclusion, such as a study of the artificial fertilization of water analogous to the method of chemically fertilizing the land for crops.The correspondence reveals that the enthusiasm Field brought to Point Judith Pond in 1896 was gradually sapped by his own fragile health, by three years' exposure to the local politics surrounding the southern Rhode Island fishing industry, and by a college administration determined to remove the stench of his invertebrates. He sought a refuge in the sheltered world of pure research at the U.S. Fish Commission Laboratory, where he set out to investigate the “Origin of Sex” using, as his animal models, squid and toadfish.On November 14, 1899, the Board of Managers of the college ordered the director of the experiment station to dispose of the marine laboratory at Point Judith Pond.31 How long the laboratory at Buttonwood Point survived in the institutional memory of the University of Rhode Island is open to question. The current Graduate School of Oceanography, in the event, traces its history back to 1937, not 1896.Nevertheless, Field and his one-room marine station established a precedent of land-grant marine research that other state colleges would follow, including Rhode Island itself, which reestablished its marine station, this time permanently, at South Ferry in 1937. In his brief research career in Rhode Island, George Wilton Field had discovered the same coastal attributes that would lead later to the creation of one of the world's major marine research centers at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography.And, in a measure of triumph for his work, little more than a year after Field left for Woods Hole and his laboratory was dismantled, the town of South Kingstown voted the funds necessary to begin the construction of a permanent breachway.32 Whether Field's scientific reasoning and the conclusions of his marine research played any part in finally deciding the thirty-year-old debate in the affirmative will probably never be known. What is evident is that Field had no patience for those who could not see the results of his research as clearly as he could himself. (shrink)

The, Police Executive Research Forum is completing a major initiative that encourages police chiefs to formalize working relationships with emergency medical personnel. The effort is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance as a demonstration with the goal of preventing recurring violence that eventually leads to homicide. The initiative originally involved a consortium of emergency room clinicians, emergency medical service personnel, as well as police executives. The collaboration initially focused on arguably preventable dimensions of domestic violence (...) and homicide. However, after “9/11” and the ensuing anthrax crisis, the project developed into a three-step draft interactive protocol for earlier police intervention in situations involving possible deaths and mass casualties. With this shift in the project, Police Executive Research Forum’s principal collaborators shifted from emergency clinicians to public health practitioners. (shrink)

Public health legal preparedness begins with effective legal authorities, and law provides a key foundation for public health practice in the United States. Laws not only create public health agencies and fund them, but also authorize and impose duties upon government to protect the public's health while preserving individual liberties. As a result, law is an essential tool in public health practice and is one element of public health infrastructure, as it defines the systems and relationships within which public health (...) practitioners operate.For purposes of this paper, law can be defined as a rule of conduct derived from federal or state constitutions, statutes, local laws, judicial opinions, administrative rules and regulations, international codes, or other pronouncements by entities authorized to prescribe conduct in a legally binding manner. Public health legal preparedness, a subset of public health preparedness, is defined as attainment of legal benchmarks within a public health system. (shrink)

_K. al-Manām_ by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā is a compendium of 350 Muslim dream narratives in Arabic. The English introduction examines the function of dreams in classical Arabic literature with a focus on dreams as a means of edification.

Classical logic, beginning with the work of Aristotle, has developed into a powerful and rigorous mathematical theory with many applications in mathematics and ...

Hierarchical Bayesian models (HBMs) provide an account of Bayesian inference in a hierarchically structured hypothesis space. Scientific theories are plausibly regarded as organized into hierarchies in many cases, with higher levels sometimes called ‘paradigms’ and lower levels encoding more specific or concrete hypotheses. Therefore, HBMs provide a useful model for scientific theory change, showing how higher‐level theory change may be driven by the impact of evidence on lower levels. HBMs capture features described in the Kuhnian tradition, particularly the idea that (...) higher‐level theories guide learning at lower levels. In addition, they help resolve certain issues for Bayesians, such as scientific preference for simplicity and the problem of new theories. *Received July 2009; revised October 2009. †To contact the authors, please write to: Leah Henderson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 32D‐808, Cambridge, MA 02139; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The authors respond to a letter by Mitchell Berger in the March‐April 2024 issue of the Hastings Center Report concerning their essay “Securing the Trustworthiness of the FDA to Build Public Trust in Vaccines.”.

This paper constructs a theory according to which an intention is not a mental state but an action at a certain developmental stage. I model intention on organic life, and thus intention stands to action as tadpole stands to frog. I then argue for this theory by showing how it overcomes three problems: intending while merely preparing, not taking any steps, and the action is impossible. The problems vanish when we see that not all actions are mature. Just as some (...) frogs are immature frogs, some actions are immature actions. (shrink)

There has been considerable puzzlement over how to respond to higher-order evidence. The existing dilemmas can be defused by adopting a ‘two-dimensional’ representation of doxastic attitudes which incorporates not only substantive uncertainty about which first-order state of affairs obtains but also the degree of conviction with which we hold the attitude. This makes it possible that in cases of higher-order evidence the evidence sometimes impacts primarily on our conviction, rather than our substantive uncertainty. I argue that such a two-dimensional representation (...) is naturally developed by making use of imprecise probabilities. (shrink)

Twelve years ago the British media got wind of a London gynecologist who performed an elective reduction on a twin pregnancy reducing it to a singleton. Perhaps not surprisingly, opinion on the moral status of twin reductions was divided. But in the last few years new evidence regarding the medical risks of twin pregnancies has emerged, suggesting that twin reductions are relevantly similar to the reductions performed on high‐end multi‐fetal pregnancies. This evidence has appeared to resolve the moral debate.In this (...) paper I look at the role of clinical evidence in medical ethics. In particular I examine the role of clinical evidence in determining what counts as a significant harm or risk. First, I challenge the extent to which these empirical claims are descriptive, suggesting instead that the evidence is to some degree normative in character. Second, I question whether such empirical claims should count as evidence for what are essentially difficult ethical decisions – a role they appear to play in the case of elective reductions. I will argue that they should not, primarily because the value‐laden nature of this evidence conceals much of what is ethically at stake. It is important to recognize that empirical evidence cannot be a substitute for ethical deliberation. (shrink)

These essays engage Jin Y. Park’s recent translation of the work of Kim Iryŏp, a Buddhist nun and public intellectual in early twentieth-century Korea. Park’s translation of Iryŏp’s Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun was the subject of two book panels at recent conferences: the first a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the second at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association on a group program session sponsored by the (...) International Society for Buddhist Philosophy. This exchange also includes a response from Park. (shrink)

Bioethicists influence practices and policies in medicine, science, and public health. However, little is known about bioethicists’ views. We recently surveyed 824 U.S. bioethicists on a wide range of ethical issues, including topics related to abortion, medical aid in dying, and resource allocation, among others. We also asked bioethicists about their demographic, religious, academic, and professional backgrounds. We find that bioethicists’ normative commitments predict their views on bioethical issues. We also find that, in important ways, bioethicists’ views do not align (...) with those of the U.S. public: for instance, bioethicists are more likely than members of the public to think abortion is ethically permissible but are less likely to believe compensating organ donors is. Our demographic results indicate the field of bioethics is far less diverse than the U.S. population—less diverse even than other academic disciplines—suggesting far more work needs to be done to build an inclusive field. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉDes travaux récents par Joseph Raz, Niko Kolodny et Sergio Tenenbaum suggèrent qu'il n'existe aucune contrainte normative propre aux intentions. De telles contraintes seraient un mythe. Selon eux, il est possible d'articuler la rationalité des intentions sans postuler que l'intention est un état mental. Je soutiens que nous pouvons aussi comprendre la nature descriptive des intentions sans postuler que l'intention est un état mental. Tout comme l'idée selon laquelle il y aurait des contraintes normatives propres aux intentions, ce postulat est (...) aussi un mythe. L'intention est plutôt une action accompagnée de certaines sous-actions caractéristiques et jouant un rôle de coordination. (shrink)

In 1962, the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure ‘revolutionized’ the way one conducts philosophical and historical studies of science. Through the introduction of both memorable and controversial notions, such as paradigms, scientific revolutions, and incommensurability, Kuhn argued against the traditionally accepted notion of scientific change as a progression towards the truth about nature, and instead substituted the idea that science is a puzzle solving activity, operating under paradigms, which become discarded after it fails to respond accordingly to anomalous challenges and (...) a rival paradigm. Kuhn’s Structure has sold over 1.4 million copies and the Times Literary Supplement named it one of the “Hundred Most Influential Books since the Second World War.” Now, fifty years after this groundbreaking work was published, this volume offers a timely reappraisal of the legacy of Kuhn’s book and an investigation into what Structure offers philosophical, historical, and sociological studies of science in the future. (shrink)

In his recent article “Ethical Criteria for Health-Promoting Nudges: A Case-by-Case Analysis,” Bart Engelen (2019) develops a useful framework for evaluating health-related nudges in an attempt to...

In this paper, we study discourses of emotion management on the reality television show Survivor. We analyze segments of the program that feature emotionally charged interactional moments and examine how these interactions are interwoven with contestants’ confessional interviews and framed by the narrator’s introductions of the segments. In a two part analysis, we first analyze the talk produced by the contestants and the host as individual texts, using a discourse analytic perspective that focuses on the details of the talk itself. (...) We then consider the ways the talk constitutes a series of layered texts and analyze these texts, using a discourse analytic approach that attends to macro-level and critical perspectives. We conclude that Survivor largely reinforces dominant cultural discourses of emotion management as strategic interactional practice that allow a person to be competitive. Furthermore, the analysis links performances of emotion management to representations of specific aspects of contestants’ social identities. (shrink)

Two of the most influential theories about scientific inference are inference to the best explanation and Bayesianism. How are they related? Bas van Fraassen has claimed that IBE and Bayesianism are incompatible rival theories, as any probabilistic version of IBE would violate Bayesian conditionalization. In response, several authors have defended the view that IBE is compatible with Bayesian updating. They claim that the explanatory considerations in IBE are taken into account by the Bayesian because the Bayesian either does or should (...) make use of them in assigning probabilities to hypotheses. I argue that van Fraassen has not succeeded in establishing that IBE and Bayesianism are incompatible, but that the existing compatibilist response is also not satisfactory. I suggest that a more promising approach to the problem is to investigate whether explanatory considerations are taken into account by a Bayesian who assigns priors and likelihoods on his or her own terms. In this case, IBE would emerge from the Bayesian account, rather than being used to constrain priors and likelihoods. I provide a detailed discussion of the case of how the Copernican and Ptolemaic theories explain retrograde motion, and suggest that one of the key explanatory considerations is the extent to which the explanation a theory provides depends on its core elements rather than on auxiliary hypotheses. I then suggest that this type of consideration is reflected in the Bayesian likelihood, given priors that a Bayesian might be inclined to adopt even without explicit guidance by IBE. The aim is to show that IBE and Bayesianism may be compatible, not because they can be amalgamated, but rather because they capture substantially similar epistemic considerations. 1 Introduction2 Preliminaries3 Inference to the Best Explanation4 Bayesianism5 The Incompatibilist View : Inference to the Best Explanation Contradicts Bayesianism5. 1 Criticism of the incompatibilist view6 Constraint - Based Compatibilism6. 1 Criticism of constraint - based compatibilism7 Emergent Compatibilism7. 1 Analysis of inference to the best explanation7. 1. 1 Inference to the best explanation on specific hypotheses7. 1. 2 Inference to the best explanation on general theories7. 1. 3 Copernicus versus Ptolemy7. 1. 4 Explanatory virtues7. 1. 5 Summary7. 2 Bayesian account8 Conclusion. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

The need for greater privacy protections in the United States has never been greater. In their work, “Ethical Responsibilities for Companies That Process Personal Data”, McCoy et al. (2023) correct...

In [2], Prikry showed that if κ is a weakly inaccessible cardinal which carries a Rowbottom filter, then there is a Boolean extension of V (the universe), having the same cardinals as V, in which cf(κ) = ω. In this note, we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions which a filter D on κ must possess in order that this may be done.

Jaegwon Kim maintains that his ‘exclusion argument’ forces us to accept reductive physicalism, which identifies mental and other high-level properties of the world with lower-level properties, over nonreductive physicalism, which avoids such identifications. According to Kim, the exclusion argument shows that any nonreductive view leads to either epiphenomenalism or unacceptable overdetermination of physical effects by physical causes. However, a popular nonreductive physicalist approach called ‘compatibilism’ aims to show that physicalism need not collapse high-level properties into lower-level physical. Compatibilism attempts to (...) block the exclusion argument by attending to the tight modal relationship between higher and lower properties required by nonreductive physicalism. Unfortunately, a similarly tight modal relationship will be embraced by any dualists who hold that natural laws are metaphysically necessary. Despite its increasingly widespread popularity among nonreductive physicalists, it thus seems that the compatibilist’s proposed solution cannot be upheld without removing the barriers to dualists of this sort. (shrink)

Solid organ transplant has revolutionized the treatment of certain diseases, providing hope where there were once only terminal diagnoses. Yet transplantation is ethically fraught, chiefly because...

This article tells the story of the oil and gas origins of the Gaia hypothesis, the theory that the Earth is a homeostatic system. It shows how Gaia’s key assumption—that the climate is a fundamentally stable system, able to withstand perturbations—emerged as a result of a collaboration between the theory’s progenitor, James Lovelock, and Royal Dutch Shell in response to Shell’s concerns about the effects of its products on the climate. The article explains how Lovelock elaborated the Gaia hypothesis and (...) gave it evidential depth through a series of Royal Dutch Shell-funded research projects meant to identify organisms whose biological activities might double as climate-regulating mechanisms. The article goes on to show how this research subsequently laid the foundation for a distinct genre of climate change denialism, in which corporations sowed doubt not by denying the phenomenon of global warming but by naturalizing it. (shrink)

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are increasingly used to assess multiple facets of healthcare, including effectiveness, side effects of treatment, symptoms, health care needs, quality of care, and the evaluation of health care options. There are thousands of these measures and yet there is very little discussion of their theoretical underpinnings. In her 2008 Presidential address to the Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQoL), Professor Donna Lamping challenged researchers to grapple with the theoretical issues that arise from these measures. In (...) this paper, I attempt to do so by arguing for an analogy between PROMs and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s logic of question and answer. While researchers readily admit that the constructs involved in PROMs are imperfectly understood and lack a gold standard, they often ignore the consequences of this fact. Gadamer’s work on questions and their importance to philosophical hermeneutics helps to show that the questions researchers ask about such constructs are also imperfectly understood. I argue that these questions should not be standardized, and I instead propose a theoretical framework that understands PROMs as posing genuine questions to respondents—questions that are open to reinterpretation. (shrink)

What is the difference between an intended consequence and a foreseen unavoidable consequence? The answer, I argue, turns on the exercise of knowhow knowledge in the process that led to the consequence. I argue for this using a theory according to which acting intentionally is acting as a reason. I show how this gives us a more promising explanation of the difference than the dominant explanations, according to which acting intentionally is acting for a reason.

Philosophers and others have questioned whether or not expertise in morality is possible. This debate is not only theoretical, but also affects the perceived legitimacy of clinical ethicists. One argument against moral expertise is that in a pluralistic society with competing moral theories no one can claim expertise regarding what another ought morally to do. There are simply too many reasonable moral values and intuitions that affect theory choice and its application; expertise is epistemically uniform. In this article, we discuss (...) how similar concerns have recently threatened to undermine expertise in medicine and science. In contrast, we argue that the application of values is needed to exercise medical, scientific, and moral expertise. As long as these values are made explicit, worries about a pretense to authority in the context of a liberal democracy are ill-conceived. In conclusion, we argue for an expertise that is epistemically diverse. (shrink)

Shenker has claimed that Von Neumann's argument for identifying the quantum mechanical entropy with the Von Neumann entropy, S() = – ktr( log ), is invalid. Her claim rests on a misunderstanding of the idea of a quantum mechanical pure state. I demonstrate this, and provide a further explanation of Von Neumann's argument.

Robert Fogelin has argued that in deep disagreements, resolution cannot be achieved by rational argumentation. In response, Richard Feldman has claimed that deep disagreements can be resolved in a similar way to more everyday disagreements. I argue that Feldman’s claim is based on a relatively superficial notion of “resolution” of a disagreement whereas the notion at stake in Fogelin’s argument is more substantive. Furthermore, I argue that Feldman’s reply is based on a particular reading of Fogelin’s argument. There is an (...) alternative reading, which takes the central concern to be the role of common ground in argumentation. Engaging with this version of Fogelin’s argument is also a worthwhile endeavour. (shrink)

Health-related quality of life measures aim to assess patients’ subjective experience in order to gauge an increasingly wide variety of health care issues such as patient needs; satisfaction; side effects; quality of care; disease progression and cost effectiveness. Their popularity is undoubtedly due to a larger initiative to provide patient-centered care. The use of patient perspectives to guide health care improvements and spending is rooted in the idea that we must respect patients as self-determining agents. In this paper I look (...) at the two main orientations to quality of life measurement: standardized and individualized measures. I argue that while these measures are attempts to provide for patient self-determination, they both fail to do so. In their place I suggest a new approach which overcomes their respective difficulties: a dialogic approach. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo explore the objectives and outcomes most appropriate for evaluating clinical ethics support services (CESs) in the USA.MethodsA three-round e-Delphi was sent to two professional medical ethics listservs (Medical College of Wisconsin-Bioethics and American Society for Bioethics and Humanities) as well as 19 individual experts. The survey originally contained 15 objectives and 9 outcomes. In round 1, participants were asked to validate the content of these lists. In round 2, we had 17 objectives and 10 outcomes, and participants were asked (...) to rank them for appropriateness in a top 10 list of objectives and a top 5 list of outcomes.ResultsParticipants came to a high(at least 70%) level of agreement on seven objectives: mediate, educate, develop policy, improve the moral quality of a decision or action, counsel, create a moral space and manage moral distress. Participants came to a moderate (at least 51%) level of agreement on three objectives: empower, awareness of ethics and preventative ethics. Participants also came to a moderate (at least 51%) level of agreement on five outcomes: ethical justification, transformation of institution, improvement of quality of life, principled consensus and satisfaction with the expertise of a CES.ConclusionThis e-Delphi identified 10 objectives and 5 outcomes that are a good starting point for developing outcome measures to evaluate CESs in the USA, while reminding us of the diversity of perspectives still evident in the field. (shrink)

Background In 2001 a report on the provision of clinical ethics support in UK healthcare institutions identified 20 clinical ethics committees. Since then there has been no systematic evaluation or documentation of their work at a national level. Recent national surveys of clinical ethics services in other countries have identified wide variation in practice and scope of activities. Objective To describe the current provision of ethics support in the UK and its development since 2001. Method A postal/electronic questionnaire survey administered (...) to the chairs of all 82 clinical ethics services registered with the UK Clinical Ethics Network in July 2010. Results Response rate was 62% with the majority of responding services situated in acute trusts. All services included a clinical ethics committee with one service also having a clinical ethicist. Lay members were present in 72% of responding committees. Individual case consultation has increased since 2001 with 29% of chairs spending more than 50% of their time on this. Access to and involvement in the process of case consultation is less for patients and families than for clinical staff. There is wide variation in committee processes and levels of institutional support. Over half of the responding committees undertook some form of evaluation. Conclusion Clinical ethics services in the UK are increasing as is their involvement in case consultation. However, the significant variation in committee processes suggests that further qualitative research is needed to understand how these committees function and the role they play in their institution. (shrink)

In the classic study Little science, big science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), Derek Price traces the historical shift from what he calls little science?exemplified by early?modern ?invisible colleges? of scientific amateurs and enthusiasts engaged in small?scale, informal interactions and personal correspondence?to 20th?century big science, dominated by professional scientists and wealthy institutions, where scientific information (primarily in print form and its analogues) was mass?produced, marketed and circulated on a global scale. This article considers whether the growing use of more (...) participatory, interactive ?Web 2.0? technologies and social media in science today (e.g. wikis, blogs, tagging and bookmarking, conferencing, etc.) may signal a revival of little science modes of communication that contrast with big science conventions that continue to dominate research policy, scientific institutions, and the publishing industry. A brief historical review of responses to the scientific ?information explosion? since the early 1900s is presented, with a particular focus on the idealization of large?scale, automated information systems and the privileging of formal (document?producing) over informal (interpersonal) modes of scientific communication. Alternative frameworks for scientific communication that incorporate both documents and interaction are used to examine contemporary examples of so?called Science 2.0 and citizen science projects to determine whether such projects indicate the emergence of new modes of communication in science that bridge the immediacy and involvement of invisible colleges and the rigor of peer?reviewed publishing. The implications for traditional documentary forms such as the journal article are also discussed. (shrink)

In many countries, health technology assessment organizations determine the economic value of new drugs and make recommendations regarding appropriate pricing and coverage in national health systems. In the US, recent policy proposals aimed at reducing drug costs would link drug prices to six countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. We reviewed these countries’ methods of HTA and guidance on price and coverage recommendations, analyzing methods and guidance documents for differences in the methodologies HTA organizations use to conduct (...) their evaluations and considerations they use when making recommendations. We found important differences in the methods, interpretations of HTA findings, and condition-specific carve-outs that HTA organizations use to conduct evaluations and make recommendations. These variations have ethical implications because they influence the recommendations of HTA organizations, which affect access to the drug through national insurance and price negotiations with manufacturers. The differences in HTA approaches result from the distinct political, social, and cultural contexts of each organization and its value judgments. New cost-containment policies in the US should consider the ethical implications of the HTA reviews that they are considering relying on to negotiate drug prices and what values should be included in US pricing policy. (shrink)

Most public and non-profit organisations that fund health research provide the majority of their funding in the form of grants. The calls for grant applications are often untargeted, such that a wide variety of applications may compete for the same funding. The grant review process therefore plays a critical role in determining how limited research resources are allocated. Despite this, little attention has been paid to whether grant review criteria align with widely endorsed ethical criteria for allocating health research resources. (...) Here, we analyse the criteria and processes that ten of the largest public and non-profit research funders use to choose between competing grant applications. Our data suggest that research funders rarely instruct reviewers to consider disease burden or to prioritise research for sicker or more disadvantaged populations, and typically only include scientists in the review processes. This is liable to undermine efforts to link research funding to health needs. (shrink)

One of philosophy’s oldest paradoxes is the apparent contradiction between the great triumphs and the dramatic failures of the human mind. The same organism that routinely solves inferential problems too subtle and complex for the mightiest computer often makes errors in the simplest of judgments about everyday events. (Nisbett and Ross 1980, p. xi).

In his essay “Afterwords”, Kuhn describes his “double goal” as To justify that science achieves knowledge of nature, and at the same time, To show that science neither achieves, nor should aim towards achieving, truth. I hold that Kuhn’s denial of truth helps to bring out a tension between the two goals of his enterprise: Kuhn cannot both maintain that science achieves knowledge of nature and dismiss the notion of truth altogether from his philosophy of science. The same arguments that (...) attack truth will ultimately damage the quest for knowledge. In this chapter, I intend explore this problem—which I will call the problem of inconsistency—and ultimately provide a defense on behalf of Kuhn. I argue that Kuhn can achieve both of his goals, and so remain consistent, by reevaluating the notion of truth in his philosophy of science. Here, I introduce an alternative correspondence theory of truth, which I call the phenomenal-world correspondence theory of truth. I will argue that Kuhn’s philosophy of science will remain consistent with this alternative view of correspondence. I believe that this notion of truth not only succeeds in defending Kuhn’s enterprise from the problem of inconsistency, but is also a kind of truth that Kuhn can accept into his philosophical enterprise despite his rejection of the traditional correspondence theory. (shrink)

The Covid‐19 pandemic highlighted the need to examine public trust in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine approval process and the role of political influence in the FDA's decisions. Ensuring that the FDA is itself trustworthy is important for justifying public trust in its actions, like vaccine approvals, thereby promoting public health. We propose five conditions of trustworthiness that the FDA should meet when it reviews vaccines, even during emergencies: consistency with rules, proper expert or political decision‐makers, proper (...) decision‐making and noninterference, connection to public preference, and transparency of both reasons and procedures. The five conditions provide a road map of procedural and substantive requirements, which the FDA has variably implemented, focused on ensuring appropriate influence of political interests. While being a trustworthy agency cannot guarantee the public's trust, implementing these conditions builds a groundwork for public trust. (shrink)

There has been much philosophical interest regarding the ‘hierarchy of evidence’ used to determine which study designs are of most value for reporting on questions of effectiveness, prognosis, and so on. There has been much less philosophical interest in the choice of outcome measures with which the results of, say, an RCT or a cohort study are presented. In this paper, we examine the FDA’s recently published guidelines for assessing the psychometric adequacy of patient-reported outcome measures. We focus on their (...) recommendations for demonstrating content validity and also for how researchers should weigh up the sum of psychometric evidence when choosing these measures. We argue that questions regarding judgment and understanding meaning of these measures should play a more central role in determining their adequacy. (shrink)

of (from British Columbia Philosophy Graduate Conference) This paper attempts to argue for an interpretation of Peter Strawson�s account of moral responsibility that successfully eliminates the threat of determinism. The goal is to capture the spirit of Strawson�s view and elucidate that spirit. I do this by emphasizing an aspect of Strawson�s account that others, like Paul Russell, may find insignificant, and then I demonstrate how this aspect is meant to quash the threat of determinism. Specifically, I claim that Strawson (...) wishes us to recognize that certain interpersonal relationships are explanatorily prior to the capacities necessary for morally responsible agency, and this explanatory relationship implies that (at least in our world) the capacities necessary for morally responsible agency could not include freedom from determinism. (shrink)

BackgroundThe main purpose of this study was to describe the latent structure of pregnancy perception by investigating the role of risks and medical examinations in pregnancy perception across the sexes and pregnancy status.MethodsStudy 1 developed a questionnaire based on the responses of 29 young adults on their perception of pregnancy. Study 2 consisted of distributing the questionnaire among 290 participants.ResultsThe statistical clustering analysis revealed three major clusters of pregnancy perceptions: “evaluative,” “physio-medical,” and “future considerations,” each of them encompassing several meaningful (...) sub-clusters. This structure of pregnancy perceptions supports Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s modernization approach. Negative emotions toward pregnancy were related to social cognitions, whereas thoughts about risks were included in the medical sub-cluster. After reliability analyses, comparisons of scale scores revealed that women experienced more positive emotions, thought more about physical symptoms and about future issues compared to men.ConclusionPregnant participants felt less ambivalence toward pregnancy, thought more about risks and medical examinations and less about parents’ duties than non-pregnant participants. (shrink)

This paper proposes that Dickens’s Bleak House is symptomatic of a so-called social realm, in which neither oikos nor polis exists as a distinct, autonomous entity; therefore, neither can offer sanctuary or adequately discharge the historical role of the household – maintaining life. In this zone of indistinction, the symbolic structures of London’s law have become the city’s physical structures, leading to symptoms like Jo the outlaw, whose illness and death is attributed to the failure of both the polis and (...) the oikos – the city’s legal housekeeping and the law-as-house, respectively – to maintain life. London’s law has become so immanent that it takes on the role of religion, thus precluding God’s transcendence. Ultimately, the novel recoils from London’s threatening presence and attempts to inter the nineteenth-century anxieties associated with the city – anxieties centering around the law both as structure and religion – through redemptive repetition: Bleak House attempts to wrest the oikos from the clutches of the polis. But despite the novel’s efforts, as the divisions between oikos and polis collapse, it is ultimately impossible for either sphere to retain any semblance of itself. As a result, retreat from the polis to the oikos is impossible: there are no longer well-defined domains – of oikos or polis – into which to retreat in the growing indistinction of the social realm. (shrink)