This paper evaluates four recent randomized clinical trials in which the informed consent of participants was either not sought at all, or else was conducted with critical information missing from the consent documents. As these studies have been taking place, various proposals to conduct randomized clinical trials without consent have been appearing in the medical literature. Some of the explanations offered for why it is appropriate to bypass consent or disclosure requirements appear to represent a fundamental misunderstanding of applicable government (...) regulations and even the research enterprise. Others are the result of conceptual disagreements about the importance and application of traditional research ethics norms to ‘comparative effectiveness research’ and modern research environments. Common among these explanations, however, is a failure to appreciate when a research intervention, rather than merely an observation or review of data, is taking place. Review committees and investigators are failing to see, or choosing to ignore, interventions in the lives of research subjects. When these studies have come to light, government agencies with oversight authority have done little or backed down. Prestigious medical journals have published research results knowing that the required consent was not obtained, or they have stood by the published studies even after the inadequacy of consent is discovered. This article critically examines this erosion of consent in theory and practice and calls for restoring the requirement of informed consent to its proper place as a priority in human subjects research. (shrink)

The Office for Human Research Protections was correct in determining that the consent forms for the National Institutes of Health -sponsored SUPPORT study were seriously flawed. Several articles defended the consent forms and criticized the OHRP's actions. Disagreement focuses on three central issues: how risks and benefits should be described in informed consent documents; the meaning and application of the concept of “standard of care” in the context of research; and the proper role of OHRP. Examination of the consent forms (...) reveals that they failed to disclose the reasonably foreseeable risks of the experimental interventions in the study, as well as the potential for differences in the degree of risk between these interventions. Although the concept of “standard of care” may be helpful in determining the ethical acceptability of other aspects of research, such as clinical equipoise, it is not helpful in discussing consent requirements. (shrink)

This collection of essays serves both as an introduction to Ruth Millikan’s much-discussed volume Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories and as an extension and application of Millikan’s central themes, especially in the philosophy of psychology. The title essay discusses meaning rationalism and argues that rationality is not in the head, indeed, that there is no legitimate interpretation under which logical possibility and necessity are known a priori. In other essays, Millikan clarifies her views on the nature of mental (...) representation, explores whether human thought is a product of natural selection, examines the nature of behavior as studied by the behavioral sciences, and discusses the issues of individualism in psychology, psychological explanation, indexicality in thought, what knowledge is, and the realism/antirealism debate. Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1 In Defense of Proper Functions 2 Propensities, Exaptations, and the Brain 3 Thoughts without Laws 4 Biosemantics 5 On Mentalese Orthography, Part 1 6 Compare and Contrast Dretske, Fodor, and Millikan on Teleosemantics 7 What Is Behavior? A Philosophical Essay on Ethology and Individualism in Psychology, Part 1 8 The Green Grass Growing All Around: A Philosophical Essay on Ethology and Individualism in Psychology, Part 2 9 Explanation in Biopsychology 10 Metaphysical Antirealism? 11 Truth Rules, Hoverflies, and the Kripke-Wittgenstein Paradox 12 Naturalist Reflections on Knowledge 13 The Myth of the Essential Indexical 14 White Queen Psychology; or, The Last Myth of the Given References Index. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic attempt to explore the point of convergance between feminist theory and the work of Michel Foucault.

There has been a lively debate amongst political theorists about whether certain liberal concepts of democracy are so idealized that they lack relevance to ʹrealʹ politics. Echoing these debates, Lois McNay examines in this book some theories of radical democracy and argues that they too tend to rely on troubling abstractions - or what she terms ʹsocially weightlessʹ thinking. They often propose ideas of the political that are so far removed from the logic of everyday practice that, ultimately, their (...) supposed emancipatory potential is thrown into question. Radical democrats frequently maintain that what distinguishes their ideas of the political from others is the fundamental concern with unmasking and challenging unrecognized forms of inequality and domination that distort everyday life. But this supposed attentiveness to power is undermined by the invocation of rarefied models of political action that treat agency as an unproblematic given and overlook certain features of the embodied experience of oppression. The tendency of radical democrats to define democratic agency in terms of dynamics of perpetual flux, mobility and agonism passes over too swiftly the way in which objective structures of oppression are often taken into the body as subjective dispositions, leaving individuals with the feeling that they are unable to do little more than endure a state of affairs beyond their control. -- Back cover. (shrink)

This article considers Foucault’s analysis of ordoliberal and neoliberal governmental reason and its reorganization of social relations around a notion of enterprise. I focus on the particular idea that the generalization of the enterprise form to social relations was conceptualized in such exhaustive terms that it encompassed subjectivity itself. Self as enterprise highlights, inter alia, dynamics of control in neoliberal regimes which operate through the organized proliferation of individual difference in an economized matrix. It also throws into question conceptions of (...) individual autonomy that underpin much political thought and upon which ideas about political resistance are based. Self as enterprise also problematizes the viability of Foucault’s later work on ethics of the self as a practice of resistance. I go on to argue that Foucault’s discussion of an unresolved clash in civil society between monarchical and governmental power, between law and norm, offers an elliptical but more promising account of opposition to normalizing bio-power. (shrink)

The relation between leibniz's logical and his metaphysical views is the subject of much modern scholarship. Some commentators have argued that his metaphysics is based on his logic; others have taken the opposite position. However, Both sides pose the question in terms of 'priority'. On the contrary, I argue that it is likely that leibniz means the psr to play "both" a logical and a metaphysical role. The ambiguity of leibniz's psr indicates that he equates the metaphysical notion of causation (...) with the logical notion of deduction. The psr's ambiguity results less from any confusion on leibniz's part between the notions of cause and reason, Than from his desire to identify logic and metaphysics. That identity is achieved not by reducing one to the other, But by incorporating them on an equal basis into a single discipline. (shrink)

We explore the extent to which Boards use executive compensation to incite firms to act in accordance with social and environmental objectives (e.g., Johnson, R. and D. Greening: 1999, Academy of Management Journal 42(5), 564-578; Kane, E. J.: 2002, Journal of Banking and Finance 26, 1919-1933.). We examine the association between executive compensation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) for 77 Canadian firms using three key components of executives' compensation structure: salary, bonus, and stock options. Similar to prior research (McGuire, J., (...) S. Dow and K. Argheyd: 2003, Journal of Business Ethics 45(4), 341-359), we measure three different aspects of CSR, which include Total CSR as well as CSR Strengths and CSR Weaknesses. CSR Strengths and CSR Weaknesses capture the positive and negative aspects of CSR, respectively. We find significant positive relationships between: (1) Salary and CSR Weaknesses, (2) Bonus and CSR Strengths, (3) Stock Options and Total CSR; and (4) Stock Options and CSR Strengths. Our findings suggest the importance of the structure of executive compensation in encouraging socially responsible actions, particularly for larger Canadian firms. This in turn suggests that executive compensation can be an effective tool in aligning executives' welfare with that of the "common good", which results in more socially responsible firms (Bebchuk, L., J. Fried and D. Walker: 2002, The University of Chicago Law Review 69, 751-846; Zalewski, D.: 2003, Journal of Economic Issues 37(2), 503-509). In addition, our findings suggest the importance of institutional context in influencing the association between executive compensation and CSR. Further implications for practice and research are discussed. (shrink)

This article considers two themes in Butler's work: the dialectic of subject formation - that the autonomous subject is instituted through constraint - and the relation between the psyche and the social. With regard to the former, the introduction of a notion of historicity into a conception of the symbolic yields a concept of agency. Nonetheless, this concept of agency still lacks social specificity. By reconfiguring the psyche as an effect of the interiorization of social norms, Butler introduces the destabilizing (...) force of the category of the unconscious into constructivist accounts of identity. This sociocentric reworking of the psyche-social relations provides a nuanced account of gender identity, but it results in a negative model of action as the displacement of constraining social norms. It is also important for a conception of agency to include an account of the creative dimensions of action where actors actively appropriate conflicting socio-cultural values to institute new collective forms of identity. (shrink)

A synthesis of rights and participatory approaches to citizenship, linked through the notion of human agency, is proposed as the basis for a feminist theory of citizenship. Such a theory has to address citizenship's exclusionary power in relation to both nation-state ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’. With regard to the former, the article argues that a feminist theory and politics of citizenship must embrace an internationalist agenda. With regard to the latter, it offers the concept of a ‘differentiated universalism’ as an attempt (...) to reconcile the universalism which lies at the heart of citizenship with the demands of a politics of difference. Embracing also the reconstruction of the public-private dichotomy, citizenship, reconceptualized in this way, can, it is argued, provide us with an important theoretical and political tool. (shrink)

Among the most auspicious findings of neuroscience in recent years is the mutability of brain connectivity. In allowing for an increased integration of the study of brain with the study of mind, it deepens our understanding of affect and cognition and of the perceptual and imaginative dimensions of the psyche. It is the primary objective of this article to investigate what the young discipline known as neuroaesthetics brings to our understanding of Beckett’s creativity and how it enriches our scholarship. Focusing (...) on Beckett’s preoccupation with memory, resituating this preoccupation within the arena of the Default Mode Network — in which reference to self is spontaneous and in some sense deeply related to the freely associative speech of the “talking cure” — leads to several conclusions: The most significant include the potentially therapeutic value Beckett derived from writing (change in the mind being a function of change in the brain) and to the justification for recontextualizing psychohistory (speculative at best) as psychobiology. (shrink)

This Article addresses the general question of "why citizenship?" through the lens of children’s citizenship. It unpacks the different elements of substantive citizenship and considers what they mean for children: membership and participation; rights; responsibilities; and equality of status, respect and recognition. It then discusses the lessons that may be learned from feminist critiques of mainstream constructions of citizenship, paying particular attention to the question of capacity for citizenship. It concludes by suggesting that much of the literature that is making (...) the case for recognition of children as citizens is not so much arguing for the wholesale extension of adult rights and obligations of citizenship to children but recognition that children’s citizenship practices constitute them as de facto, even if not complete de jure, citizens. More broadly, the Article argues that this position points towards an understanding of citizenship which embraces but goes beyond that of a bundle of rights. (shrink)

Drawing on fieldwork and in-depth interviews with homeschooling mothers in the Pacific Northwest, the author reveals several ways the temporal experience of motherhood was emotionally problematic. The intensive demands of homeschooling left them stressed and dissatisfied with the amount of time they had to pursue their own interests. Mothers tried to allocate their time differently to manage these feelings, yet their efforts were unsuccessful, which led them to become frustrated and resentful. To resolve these troublesome feelings, mothers resorted to manipulating (...) their subjective experiences of time through a process the author calls “temporal emotion work.” In the conclusion, the author examines the theoretical confluence of emotions and temporality, suggesting that the dominant form of motherhood is culturally defined as a “time-sensitive identity” and that “temporal emotions” are unique tools in managing the emotional difficulties inherent in the trajectories of some identities. (shrink)

This paper explains why informed consent for randomized comparative effectiveness research must include risks of standard care. Disclosures of such risks are both legally and ethically required and, for reasons discussed in the paper, should remain so.

The AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) has initiated an important discussion on medical professionalism and the use of social media by issuing thoughtful and practical guidance for physicians and medical students. The implications of online activities for trust in the profession, as well as for trust between patient and doctor, however, will need further exploration as digital life expands and evolves.

In this article, the author examines the gendered emotional culture of high-risk takers. Drawing on five and one-half years of ethnographic fieldwork with a volunteer search and rescue group, the author details the intense emotions rescuers experienced before, during, and after the most dangerous and upsetting rescues. Lyng's concept of “edgework” is used to analyze how male and female rescuers experienced, understood, and acted on their feelings. The data reveal several gendered patterns that characterized this emotional culture. The article concludes (...) with a discussion of gender, edgework, and emotional culture, focusing on the theoretical implications of their confluence. (shrink)

In Parkinson’s disease, the fronto-striatal network is involved in motor and cognitive symptoms. Working memory updating training engages this network in healthy populations, as observed by improved cognitive performance and increased striatal BOLD signal. This two-part study aimed to assess the feasibility of WM updating training in PD and measure change in cognition, movement and functional brain response in one individual with PD after WM updating training. A feasibility and single-subject study were performed in which patients with PD completed computerized (...) WM updating training. The outcome measures were the pre-post changes in criterion and transfer cognitive tests; cognitive complaints; psychological health; movement kinematics; and task-related BOLD signal. Participants in the feasibility study showed improvements on the criterion tests at post-test. FL displayed the largest improvements on the criterion tests and smaller improvements on transfer tests. Furthermore, FL reported improved cognitive performance in everyday life. A shorter onset latency and smoother upper-limb goal-directed movements were measured at post-test, as well as increased activation within the striatum and decreased activation throughout the fronto-parietal WM network. This two-part study demonstrated that WM updating training is feasible to complete for PD patients and that change occurred in FL at post-test in the domains of cognition, movement and functional brain response. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which postdoctoral life scientists engage in supervision work in academic institutions in Austria. Reward systems and career conditions in academic institutions in most European and other OECD countries have changed significantly during the last two decades. While an increasing focus is put on evaluating research performances, little reward is attached to excellent performances in mentoring and advising students. Postdoctoral scientists mostly inhabit fragile institutional positions and experience harsh competition, as the number of available senior (...) positions is small compared to that of young scientists striving for an academic career. To prevail in this competition, publications and mobility are key. Educational work is rarely rewarded. Nevertheless, postdocs play a key role in educating PhD students, as overburdened senior scientists often pass on practical supervision duties to their postdoctoral fellows. This paper shows how under these conditions, postdocs reframe the students they supervise as potential resources for co-authored publications. What might look like a mutually beneficial solution at a first glance, in practice implies the subordination of the values of education to the logic of production, which marginalizes spaces primarily devoted to education. The author argues that conflicts like this are indicative of broader changes in the cultural norms of science and academic citizenship, rendering community-oriented tasks such as education work less attractive to academic scientists. Since education and supervision work are central cornerstones of any functioning higher education and research system, this could have negative repercussions for the long-term development of academic institutions. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the idea of exemplarity outlined by the Italian critical theorist Alessandro Ferrara that forms part of his general case for the centrality of disclosure to emancipatory political reasoning. Ferrara argues that “at its best” political thought should have the capacity to animate the democratic imagination by disclosing new political worlds and hence new possibilities for thought and action. I argue that Ferrara’s notion of exemplarity provides important conceptual resources for a re-grounding of critical theory in the (...) type of experientially based disclosing critique that has, post Habermas, been marginalized. Ferrara’s work is significant in two respects. First, exemplary universalism provides a much-needed alternative to the assimilative paradigms of normative reasoning that dominate contemporary political theory. Exemplary normativity suggests a mode of reasoning from concrete particularity that is more inclusive than principle-based approaches of voices which, by virtue of their ma... (shrink)

By whatever general principles and mechanisms animal behavior is governed, human behavior control rides piggyback on top of the same or very similar mechanisms. We have reflexes. We can be conditioned. The movements that make up our smaller actions are mostly caught up in perception-action cycles following perceived Gibsonian affordances. Still, without doubt there are levels of behavior control that are peculiar to humans. Following Aristotle, tradition has it that what is added in humans is rationality ("rational soul"). Rationality, however, (...) can be and has been characterized in many different ways. I am going to speculate about two different kinds of cognitive capacities that we humans seem to have, each of which is at least akin to rationality as Aristotle described it. The first I believe we share with many other animals, the second perhaps with none. Since this session of the conference on rational animals has been designated a "brainstorming" session, I will take philosopher's license, presenting no more than the softest sort of intuitive evidence for these ideas. (shrink)

The recent Minnesota case of In re Emergency Guardianship of Albert Barnes illustrates an emerging class of cases where a dispute between a family proxy and a hospital over “medical futility” requires legal resolution. The case was further complicated by the patient’s spouse who fraudulently claimed to be the patient’s designated health care proxy and who misrepresented the patient’s previously expressed treatment preferences. Barnes demonstrates the degree of significant administrative and institutional support to the health care team, ethics consultants, and (...) futility committees that is required when a futility dispute escalates to the need for judicial resolution. An institutional futility policy, especially one that is endorsed by other regional medical centers and organizations, is an important foundation for a hospital that seeks judicial support in a dispute over medical futility in end of life care. (shrink)

The importance of unconscious cognition is seeping into popular consciousness. A number of recent books bridging the academic world and the reading public stress that at least a portion of decision-making depends not on conscious reasoning, but instead on cognition that occurs below awareness. However, these books provide a limited perspective on how the unconscious mind works and the potential power of intuition. This essay is an effort to expand the picture. It is structured around the book that has garnered (...) the most attention, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink , but it also considers Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer and How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman . These books help deepen the . (shrink)

I sketch in miniature the whole of my work on the relation between language and thought. Previously I have offered closeups of this terrain in various papers and books, and I reference them freely. But my main purpose here is to explain the relations among the parts, hoping this can serve as a short introduction to my work on language and thought for some, and for others as a clarification of the larger plan.

This book represent the diversity and interdisciplinary nature of the conference itself covering topics such as historical and theological concepts of evil, media representations of evil, contemporary debates surrounding the Bosnia war and woman perpetrators in Birkenau, and the construction of the Other as evil in the face of the continuing hysteria over AIDS.

Thinking with, against, and after Ernst Käsemann’s appropriation of the biblical metaphor of eschatological birth pangs, this article seeks to reassess our understanding of what it means to be a theologian of the cross. It does so by way of a depiction of Paul’s apostolic practice as a social and embodied—and yet cruciform—mode of epiphanic manifestation. Thinking with Käsemann, it brings to the fore the significance of this apocalyptic understanding of apostolic practice for contemporary theological reflection at the interface of (...) biblical studies, philosophy, and ethics. Thinking against Käsemann, it demonstrates ways in which this reading of Paul enables us to address more effectively major criticisms of a theology of the cross and Pauline theology in general. Finally, thinking after Käsemann, it discusses the ways that this portrayal of Paul’s practice funds resources for reconfiguring theological education ‘after whiteness’. (shrink)

What is it to be a rational agent? The orthodox answer to this question can be summarized by a slogan: Rationality is a matter of recognizing and responding to reasons. But is the orthodoxy correct? In this chapter, I explore an alternative way of thinking about what it is to be a rational agent according to which a central activity of rational agency is the creation of reasons. I explain how the idea of metaphysical grounding can help make sense of (...) the idea that as rational agents, we can, quite literally, create reasons. I end by suggesting a reason to take this alternative view of rational agency seriously. The orthodoxy faces a challenge: How do rational agents make choices within ‘well-formed choice situations’? By allowing that we have the normative power to create reasons, we have a satisfying and attractive solution to this question. (shrink)