In this paper, I plan to show that the use of a specific population concept—Millstein’s Causal Interactionist Population Concept (CIPC)—has interesting and counter-intuitive ramifications for discussions of the reality of biological race in human beings. These peculiar ramifications apply to human beings writ large and to individuals. While this in and of itself may not be problematic, I plan to show that the ramifications that follow from applying Millstein’s CIPC to human beings complicates specific biological racial realist accounts—naïve or otherwise. (...) I conclude with the notion that even if biological races do exist—by fulfilling all of the criteria needed for Millstein’s population concept (which, given particular worries raised by Gannett (Synthese 177:363–385, 2010), and Winther and Kaplan (Theoria 60:54–80, 2013) may not)—the lower-bound limit for the scope of biological racial realism is at the level of populations, and as such they cannot say anything about whether or not individual organisms themselves have races. (shrink)

The growth in the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry poses a number of challenges for healthcare practice, among a number of other areas of concern. Several companies providing this service send their customers reports including information variously referred to as genetic ethnicity, genetic heritage, biogeographic ancestry, and genetic ancestry. In this article, we argue that such information should not be used in healthcare consultations or to assess health risks. Far from representing a move toward personalized medicine, use of this information poses (...) risks both to patients as individuals and to racialized ethnic groups because of the way it misrepresents human genetic diversity. (shrink)

This chapter aims to bring to the fore some of the ontological presuppositions that undergird the concepts of race and racism as they are used in public health. Included are discussions of differing accounts for race in public health, the ways in which racism is understood to be a public health issue, and where future research in public health, as it relates to the concepts of race and racism, is headed.

The syllabus presented here is designed for use in the training of researchers and research ethics committee members throughout the European Union and beyond. It is intended to be accessible to scientific and lay readers, including those with no previous experience of ethical theory and analysis. The syllabus will cover key issues in the ethics of research involving human participants, including the ethical issues associated with new technologies.

In 2018 Academic Placement Data and Analysis ran a survey of doctoral students and recent graduates on the topics of diversity and inclusivity in collaboration with the Graduate Student Council and Data Task Force of the American Philosophical Association. We submitted a preliminary report in Fall 2018 that describes the origins and procedure of the survey [1]. This is our final report on the survey. We first discuss the demographic profile of our survey participants and compare it to the United (...) States general population, its doctoral students, and APA membership, finding several areas of underrepresentation (i.e. gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic, and veteran status). We then discuss the results of questions regarding diversity and inclusivity. We find, for instance, that participant comfort in philosophy depends on gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, disability, and language status and that participants most often mentioned the theme of diversity when asked how philosophy could be more inclusive. Finally, we discuss the results of questions related to graduate program and placement. We find, for example, that underrepresented graduates are both less likely to recommend their graduate program to others and less likely to prefer an academic job. We close by making some recommendations for the APA and for the discipline based on our findings. (shrink)

ABSTRACT To date, the American Psychological Association Ethical Standards and Code of Conduct does not include direct guidance about how psychologists should navigate social media. Given the variety of roles psychologists can choose to engage on social media, it is imperative that guidelines are established. These guidelines should consider the multidimensionality that exists as psychologists may choose to present on social media through a personal presence, a business presence, and/or even an influencer/content creator presence. Specific ethical considerations and recommendations are (...) provided. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page W12-W13.

Although science supplies medicine's “gold standard,” knowledge exercised in the care of patients is, like moral knowing, a matter of narrative, practical reason. Physicians draw on case narrative to store experience and to apply and qualify the general rules of medical science. Literature aids in this activity by stimulating moral imagination and by requiring its readers to engage in the retrospective construction of a situated, subjective account of events. Narrative truths are provisional, uncertain, derived from narrators whose standpoints are always (...) situated, particular, and uncertain, but open to comparison and reinterpretation. Reading is thus a model for knowing in both morality and clinical medicine. While principles remain essential to bioethics and science must always inform good clinical practice, the tendency to collapse morality into principles and medicine into science impoverishes both practices. Moral knowing is not separable from clinical judgment. While ethics must be open to discussion and interpretation by patients, families, and society, it is nevertheless substantively and epistemologically an inextricable part of a physician's clinical practice. (shrink)

Background: Attending surgeons must maintain balance between promoting education and assuring safe, transparent patient care. This investigation aimed to define ethics that guide surgical training. We hypothesized that resident autonomy in the operating room is influenced by attending approach to patients, specifically patients considered to be vulnerable. Materials and Methods: After IRB approval, surgeons from three institutions were invited to participate in a pilot, survey, exploring how principles of patient autonomy, physician beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice apply to participant opinions. Responses (...) were transcribed and coded for quantitative and qualitative analysis. Results: 51 attendings and 55 residents completed the survey. We identified that patient autonomy is upheld through transparent consent practices. Intraoperative supervision is a key practice that maintains the principles of physician beneficence and nonmaleficence and mitigates the risk of resident participation. Vulnerable patients were defined by respondents as those unable to participate in their own consent and those limited by social determinants of health and barriers to medical literacy. In contrast, resident participation is not limited in the care of vulnerable patients but is restricted in cases of higher complexity and those procedures deemed to have lower error margins. Conclusions: Although residents measure the success of their training based on their level of intraoperative independence, autonomy afforded to the resident does not only depend on objective skill. There are ethical considerations that the attending must navigate as they decide on effective teaching and safe surgical management, which is especially relevant in the care of complex cases. (shrink)

The influence of Aśvaghoṣa on the later tradition of kāvya was largely passed over in the South Asian tradition, even though the debt to his influence is clear in processional scenes developed by Kālidāsa and the attempted seduction of Arjuna developed by Bhāravi in his Kirātārjunīyam. We know from the testimony of the Chinese pilgrim Yijing that the Buddhacarita was a revered object of study in the Sumatran capital Śrībhoga near the close of the seventh century CE. It thus perhaps (...) comes as no surprise that three tropes or themes developed by Aśvaghoṣa were developed by several important composers of kakawin, the Old Javanese literary genre comparable to the kāvya of South Asia. This paper looks at the development of the themes of processions, divine battles and attempted seductions in a long history beginning with Aśvaghoṣa and closing with the work of the Javanese author Mpu Tantular, who completed the Buddhist kakawin Sutasoma c. 1365–1389 CE. This paper is partly based on a revised perspective on the history of the Shailendra and Sañjaya dynasties of central Java developed by examining the role of the “Shailendra royal preceptors” in bringing Sanskrit learning to Central Java in the period 778–847 CE. (shrink)

It is quite difficult to respond briefly and effectively to such a devastating charge as that the only merit your book has is that it is honest. My strategy will be, by showing that a few of Resnick's criticisms are ill-taken, to generate the presumption that the same could be said of a lot more of them. I will first discuss some minor points, and then two larger issues.

The following are not among the least puzzling remarks in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations:572. Expectation is, grammatically, a state; like: being of an opinion, hoping for something, knowing something, being able to do something. But in order to understand the grammar of these states it is necessary to ask: ‘What counts as a criterion for anyone's being in such a state?’ 573.… What, in particular cases, do we regard as criteria for someone's being of such and such an opinion? When do (...) we say: he reached this opinion at that time? When he has altered his opinion? And so on. The picture which the answers to these questions give us shews what gets treated grammatically as a state here. (shrink)

The paper suggests an interpretation of section 106 of wittgenstein's "zettel", Where it is said that 'the concept of thinking is formed on the model of an imaginary auxiliary activity'. The suggestion is that when we complain that someone was not thinking, We don't mean that a familiar activity called thinking was not performed, But we make as if there was an activity, The performance of which saves people from doing stupid things, And it was not performed, As a way (...) of saying that the other person acted foolishly. (shrink)

In reading Wittgenstein one can, and for the most part perhaps should, treat the expression ‘language-game’ as a term of art, a more or less arbitrarily chosen item of terminology meaning something like ‘an actual or possible way of using words’. It would then be a fairly routine task to work out answers to such questions as what features of the ways a word is used are emphasized by this term of art, what philosophical purposes are served by the description (...) of primitive language-games or of variations on actual language-games, or in exactly what way those purposes are supposed to be served. (shrink)

Although the volume of the surviving papers of Robert Boyle is substantial (over 20,000 leaves), a considerable amount of the written material left by Boyle at his death in 1691 has not survived in the Boyle archive. This paper gauges the scale and identity of these losses using the surviving inventories made by the Rev. Henry Miles in the 1740s when he was collecting and sorting Boyle's literary remains in conjunction with Thomas Birch's preparation of his 1744 Life and Works (...) of Boyle. These detailed lists (edited as appendices to this paper), together with other sources, indicate losses due to a variety of reasons, some deliberate, others accidental. The losses involved the disposal of both items judged (in the eighteenth century) to be peripheral to Boyle's archive and, ironically, those in the most finished state from Boyle's hand, which were perhaps abortively destined for the Birch edition. These losses have significantly altered the character of the Boyle Papers, and thus the view of Boyle that is derived from them. (shrink)

It is a curious thing about the philosophy of mind, that it includes surprisingly little about minds. In an average anthology on the subject, or a book like Ryle's, one finds discussions of thinking, imagining, believing, willing, remembering, and so on, but not of minds. It seems to be assumed that investigating these topics is investigating minds; but whether that is true is not itself made a topic for investigation.

In this paper; having somewhat arbitrarily adopted a general line of interpretation of Wittgenstein on forms of life in which the word ’life' is taken in a biological sense, I try to work out ways of being more specific than that, which (a) are philosophically interesting, (b) are consistent with Wittgenstein's uses of the expression form of life' and with other remarks of his that seem closely connected, and (c) that take seriously both his disavowal of THESES in philosophy and (...) his (related) belief that the job of philosophy is not to devise better theories, but to show how the problem itself arises from a particular kind of misunderstanding of language. A number of ways in which the idea of a form of life could play that sort of part are explored, for example the question how we know from which direction a sound comes, which we might initially have supposed to be answerable by reference to a calculation of the time difference in the arrival of a sound wave at one ear and then the other is rejected in favour of a supposition that the waves affect the nervous system and thereby causes us to look in the correct direction. This is an important difference. A neurologist might spend half a lifetime tracking down the nerves that calculate the direction, ana fail because no such calculation is done. Misdirected questions about identifying and locating pains, and about mastery are investigated, and finally Wittgenstein is depicted as holding that the nervous system, together with membership in a community provides all the assurance we need of the general correctness of calculations. (shrink)

Gallop's criticisms are so extensive and so vigorous that one may wonder how he could mean it when he praises my book in the ways he does at the beginning and end of his notice. In the hope of making it believable that some at least of the praise is deserved, I will try to show that much of the criticism is not as damaging as it may at first appear. Most of what I say will be of a rather (...) general nature, and that is perhaps unfortunate when Gallop has gone into so many interesting questions of detail; but one of my general defences will be that this discussion of particular questions not only does not, but could not, support the objection that the decision procedure that is illustrated in the book is incapable of dealing with all too many of the moral dilemmas an average person is likely to have to face. (shrink)

John Locke:When we set before our eyes a round globe of uniform colour, v.g. gold, alabaster or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed, with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having, by use, been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of (...) the sensible figures of bodies: the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes.H.H. Price:…. a distant hillside which is full of protuberances, and slopes upwards at quite a gentle angle, will appear flat and vertical….. This means that the sense-datum, the colour expanse which we sense, actually is flat and vertical. (shrink)

The article is an interpretation of about the first half of chapter xi of part ii of "philosophical investigations". Wittgenstein is treated as having the single aim of arguing down the massive temptation to suppose that the expression 'to see...As...', And such similar expressions as 'to recognize', Record the occurrence of an experience distinct from the experience of simply seeing the object seen as or recognized. Ways are suggested of making a kind of sense of most of the very perplexing (...) remarks in this stretch of the "investigations". (shrink)

Clinical trials of xenotransplantation (XTx) may begin early in the next decade, with kidneys from genetically modified pigs transplanted into adult humans. If successful, transplanting pig hearts into children with advanced heart failure may be the next step. Typically, clinical trials have a specified end date, and participants are aware of the amount of time they will be in the study. This is not so with XTx. The current ethical consensus is that XTx recipients must consent to lifelong monitoring. While (...) this presents challenges to the right to withdraw in the adult population, additional and unanswered questions also linger in the paediatric population. In paediatric XTx, parents or guardians consent not only to the initial treatment of the child but also to lifelong monitoring, thus making a decision whose consequences will remain present as the child develops the capacity for assent, and finally the capacity for informed consent or refusal. This article presents and evaluates unanswered paediatric ethical questions in regard to the right to withdraw from XTx follow-up in the paediatric population. (shrink)

In “Moral Responsibility for Dreams,” Harvey Mullane maintains that although there is something inappropriate about blaming people for their dreams, this is because we do not have very direct control over our dreams: but although this is the case, it is not the case that we have no control over them. We can work at having the right dreams, or not having the wrong ones, as we can work at blushing and not blushing and at loving our neighbour: and therefore (...) presumably there must be a sense in which or a degree to which we can be responsible for what we dream. There are a number of aspects of this question, and of Mullane's treatment of it, which I would like to explore further. (shrink)

Many people seem to find it quite impossible to doubt that if a person did not do something freely, then he can be neither praised nor blamed for doing it. This assumption is shared by people with very different views about freedom, determinism and moral responsibility. It is held by most ‘libertarians’, who, to preserve moral responsibility, reject determinism. It is held by ‘hard determinists’, who accept determinism and therefore reject moral responsibility; and it is held by ‘soft determinists’, who (...) accept determinism, but argue that determinism does not exclude any kind of freedom that is relevant to whether a person may be held responsible. (shrink)

Persistent and pervasive rudeness and lack of respect are unfortunately common in workplaces today. The deleterious effects of this incivility at work may be even worse than previously demonstrated, impacting not only employee victims but also trickling down to those who employees contact. However, we propose that leaders who prioritize their followers’ needs above their own, also known as servant leaders, may be a critical preventative mechanism to reduce group-level incivility through promoting a virtuous climate. Applying social learning theory and (...) social information processing theory, we argue that servant leaders role model virtuous character that contributes to a virtuous climate that influences group members to reduce incivility and, in turn, treat others well. We utilize the healthcare setting to support this hypothesized process across multi-source measures of incivility from coworkers and team supervisors and three indicators of quality of patient care. Specific findings and implications for managers in healthcare settings and beyond are discussed. (shrink)

During the early Cambrian period metazoan life forms diverged at an accelerated rate to occupy multiple ecological niches on earth. A variety of explanations have been proposed to address this major evolutionary phenomenon termed the “Cambrian explosion.” While most hypotheses address environmental, developmental, and ecological factors that facilitated evolutionary innovations, the biological basis for accelerated emergence of species diversity in the Cambrian period remains largely conjectural. Herein, we posit that morphogenesis by self‐organization enables the uncoupling of genomic mutational landscape from (...) phenotypic diversification. Evidence is provided for a two‐tiered interpretation of genomic changes in metazoan animals wherein mutations not only impact upon function of individual cells, but also alter the self‐organization outcome during developmental morphogenesis. We provide evidence that the morphological impacts of mutations on self‐organization could remain repressed if associated with an unmet negative energetic cost. We posit that accelerated morphological diversification in transition to the Cambrian period has occurred by emergence of dormant (i.e., reserved) morphological novelties whose molecular underpinnings were seeded in the Precambrian period. (shrink)

Folk stories featuring prosocial content are ubiquitous across cultures. One explanation for the ubiquity of such stories is that stories teach people about the local socioecology, including norms of prosociality, and stories featuring prosocial content may increase generosity in listeners. We tested this hypothesis in a sample of 185 Hadza hunter-gatherers. We read participants a story in which the main character either swims with another person (control story) or rescues him from drowning (prosocial story). After hearing the story, participants (...) played a dictator game with dried meat sticks and then were given a recall test of facts presented in the story. There was moderate evidence for a small effect of the prosocial story: participants who heard the prosocial story gave an estimated 0.22 [90% HDI: −0.12–0.57] more meat sticks than those who heard the control story. However, the association between generosity and sex, marital status, and region of residence was stronger; men gave more than women, unmarried participants gave more than married participants, and participants living in a region with more exposure to markets gave more than participants living further from markets. There was no evidence that the prosocial story was more easily recalled than the control story. These results provide some support for the hypothesis that prosocial stories can increase prosociality in listeners, though the effect of hearing a single story is small. (shrink)

Nursing as a profession has a social mandate to contribute to the good of society through knowledge-based practice. Knowledge is built upon theories, and theories, together with their philosophical bases and disciplinary goals, are the guiding frameworks for practice. This article explores a philosophical perspective of nursing's social mandate, the disciplinary goals for the good of the individual and society, and one approach for translating knowledge into practice through the use of a middle-range theory. It is anticipated that the integration (...) of the philosophical perspective and model into nursing practice will strengthen the philosophy, disciplinary goal, theory, and practice links and expand knowledge within the discipline. With the focus on humanization, we propose that nursing knowledge for social good will embrace a synthesis of the individual and the common good. This approach converges vital and agency needs described by Hamilton and the primacy of maintaining the heritage of the good within the human species as outlined by Maritain. Further, by embedding knowledge development in a changing social and health care context, nursing focuses on the goals of clinical reasoning and action. McCubbin and Patterson's Double ABCX Model of Family Adaptation was used as an example of a theory that can guide practice at the community and global level. Using the theory-practice link as a foundation, the Double ABCX model provides practising nurses with one approach to meet the needs of individuals and society. The integration of theory into nursing practice provides a guide to achieve nursing's disciplinary goals of promoting health and preventing illness across the globe. When nursing goals are directed at the synthesis of the good of the individual and society, nursing's social and moral mandate may be achieved. (shrink)

Objectives The potential effects of exposure to repetitive subconcussive head impacts through routine participation in sport are not understood. To investigate the effects of repetitive subconcussive head impacts we studied boxers following customary training (sparring) using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), decomposition electromyographic (EMG) and tests of memory. Methods Twenty amateur boxers performed three 3-min sparring bouts. Parameters of brain function and motor control were assessed prior to sparring and again immediately, 1 h and 24 h post-sparring. Twenty control participants were (...) assessed following mock-sparring. Results One hour after sparring boxers showed increased corticomotor inhibition, altered motor unit recruitment strategies, and decreased memory performance relative to controls, with values returning to baseline by the 24 h follow up. Conclusion Repetitive subconcussive head impacts associated with sparring resulted in acute and transient brain changes similar to those previously reported in soccer heading, providing convergent evidence that sport-related head impacts produce a GABAergic response. These acute changes in brain health are reminiscent of effects seen following brain injury, and suggest a potential mechanism underlying the damaging long-term effects of routine repetitive head impacts in sport. (shrink)

Can we dispense with mimesis in representation? Content Type Journal Article Category Essay Review Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9529-1 Authors José A. Díez, Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science/LOGOS Research Group, University of Barcelona, C/Montalegre, 6-8, 08001 Barcelona, Spain Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

We present the first published ethnographic description of landscape burning by Hadza hunter-gatherers of northern Tanzania and identify environmental, social, and cultural influences on Hadza landscape burning, thereby broadening the ethnographic record of anthropogenic burning practices described for hunter-gatherer communities. We report interview data collected in 2022 and 2023, describing their practices and attitudes regarding the causes and consequences of burning. We provide context by comparing our observations with those recorded for hunting and gathering populations in Africa, Australia, (...) and North America. Hadza landscape burning is generally a solitary and male-dominated activity, contrary to ethnographic accounts of Indigenous landscape burning from North America and Australia. The primary goals stated by Hadza for landscape burning were improved hunting, reduced hazards from dangerous animals, and to reduce the density of livestock. Firsthand observations suggest that landscape burning has decreased over the past 20 years, and this historical trend is supported by interviews. Satellite imagery also suggests an overall decrease in burning activity in the region from 2001 to 2022. Among the Hadza, landscape burning is a culturally influenced and strongly gender-biased activity that is rapidly disappearing. Because burning can radically transform landscapes, these practices often generate or amplify conflicts of interest between groups with different land use strategies. Hadza report serious social conflict with pastoralists over landscape burning, and our study suggests this tension has constrained the practice in the past two decades. (shrink)