This paper describes the first three-year experience of the Consortium Ethics Program (CEP-1) of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Medical Ethics, and also outlines plans for the second three-year phase (CEP-2) of this experiment in continuing ethics education. In existence since 1990, the CEP has the primary goal of creating a cost-effective, permanent ethics resource network, by utilizing the educational resources of a university bioethics center and the practical expertise of a regional hospital council. The CEP's conception and specific (...) components stem from recognition of the need to make each hospital a major focus of educational efforts, and to provide academic support for the in-house activities of the representatives from each institution. (shrink)

Listening to someone from some distance in a crowded room you may experience the following phenomenon: when looking at them speak, you may both hear and see where the source of the sounds is; but when your eyes are turned elsewhere, you may no longer be able to detect exactly where the voice must be coming from. With your eyes again fixed on the speaker, and the movement of her lips a clear sense of the source of the sound will (...) return. This ‘ventriloquist’ effect reflects the ways in which visual cognition can dominate auditory perception. And this phenomenological observation is one what you can verify or disconfirm in your own case just by the slightest reflection on what it is like for you to listen to someone with or without visual contact with them. (shrink)

Background The post-trial period is the time period after the end of study drug administration. It is unclear whether post-trial arrangements for patient surveillance are routinely included in study protocols and consents, and whether research ethics boards (REB) consider the post-trial period. Objectives The objective was to determine whether trial protocols and consent forms reviewed by the REB describe procedures for post-trial period surveillance. Methods An observational study of protocols of randomised trials of chronic therapies for cardiac conditions, approved by (...) the REB of two academic institutions affiliated with the University of Toronto in Canada (University Health Network and Mount Sinai Hospital) from 1995 to 2007. Plans for patient surveillance in the post-trial period described in the protocol or in the consent form before and after REB approval were recorded. Results 42 studies were identified including 18 heart failure and 15 coronary artery disease trials. Only four studies planned a clinical visit after trial termination, and an additional three planned a telephone contact after trial completion. Five trials submitted consent forms to the REB with a discussion of the post-trial period. Conclusions The majority of protocols and consent forms did not discuss plans for post-trial period surveillance. The post-trial period and the REB approval process could be improved by systematic follow-up being described in the protocol and consent form. The small number of trial protocols evaluated in the study may impair the degree to which the results can be generalised. (shrink)

Trust among current and future patients is essential for the success of biobank research. The submission of an informed consent is an act of trust by a patient or a research subject, but a strict application of the rule of informed consent may not be sensitive to the multiplicity of patient interests at stake, and could thus be detrimental to trust. According to a recently proposed law on “genetic integrity” in Sweden, third parties will be prohibited from requesting or seeking (...) genetic information about an individual. Cumbersome restrictions on research may be lifted, thus creating a more favourable climate for medical research. (shrink)

When we dream, it is often assumed, we are isolated from the external environment. It is also commonly believed that dreams can be, at times, accurate, convincing replicas of waking experience. Here I analyse some of the implications of this view for an enactive theory of conscious experience. If dreams are, as described by the received view, “inactive”, or “cranially envatted” whilst replicating the experience of being awake, this would be problematic for certain extended conscious mind theories. Focusing specifically on (...) Alva Noë’s enactive view, according to which the vehicles of perceptual experience extend beyond the brain, I argue that dreams are a quandary. Noë’s view is that dreaming is consistent with enactivism because even if dreams are inactive and shut off from the external environment, they are not “full-blown” perceptual consciousness, and also, there is some reason to reject the inactive claim. However, this view rests on an unjustified and reductive account of dreams which is not supported... (shrink)

The usual way for new cells to come into being is by division of old cells. So the zygote, which is a—new—single cell formed from two, the sperm and ovum, is an exception. Textbooks of human genetics usually say that this new cell is beginning of a new human individual. What this indicates is that they suddenly forget about identical twins.

In today's complex business world, the question of business ethics is increasingly gaining importance as managers and employees face numerous ethical dilemmas in their jobs. The ethical climate in the Turkish business environment is also at a critical stage, and the business community as a whole is troubled by ethical problems. This study attempts to determine the effect of individual, managerial and organizational factors on the ethical judgments of Turkish managers, and to evaluate the ethical perceptions of these managers. The (...) findings of this study reveal that the ethics score, the measure of ethical judgment, of Turkish managers differs significantly only with respect to gender and that female managers have higher ethics score than male managers. Other individual, managerial and organizational factors considered in this study do not have any significant effect on the ethical judgments of the managers. A comparative analysis between female and male managers in terms of their ranking of the eleven ethical business scenarios, ranking of the sixteen unethical acts, ranking of the factors influencing managers to engage in unethical practices, and ranking of the various parties to whom a company is socially responsible enables the researchers to enlighten the subject of business ethics in Turkey. (shrink)

Context: Josef Mitterer has become known for criticizing the main exponents of analytic and constructivist philosophy for their blind adoption of a dualistic epistemology based on an alleged ontological difference between world and words. Judith Butler, who has developed an influential model of (de)constructivist feminism and has been labeled a linguistic constructivist, has been criticized for sustaining exactly what, according to Mitterer, most modern philosophy fails to acknowledge: namely that there is no ontological difference between objective facts beyond language and (...) the discourse about these facts. Problem: In the scholarly discussion on non-dualism, two main questions have been raised: Where does Mitterer’s basic consensus, i.e., the starting-point description, come from? and: What does it mean, to say that further descriptions change their object? Method: Comparative analysis of the core concepts of Mitterer’s and Butler’s work in the context of the history of ideas. Results: Butler’s conception of a performative production of objectivity through discursive and non-discursive iterated practices can be interpreted as an illustration of Mitterer’s claim that descriptions change their object. The problem of where Mitterer’s starting-point descriptions come from can be solved by adopting Butler’s concept of culturally inherited practices. (shrink)

A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

Interactions entail a tangled mix of emotional states that emerge between the people who are communicating. Being capable of comprehending these states help us to adapt to our partner’s needs enhancing the interaction. In the same fashion, we believe that robots capable of such skills would be better integrated in society. Hence, this paper tackles the internal state that focuses on the unfolding of any social exchange: Comfortability. It explores whether a humanoid robot can have an impact on humans Comfortability (...) and explores the way people might behave. To this aim, the iCub robot interviewed 29 non-HRI researchers for a real column of the IIT Opentalk online magazine. During the interview the robot complimented, ignored, interrupted, and insulted the participant with the intention of making them feel opposite Comfortability levels. The results concluded that a humanoid robot can affect people’s Comfortability highlighting that not everyone perceives, assimilates, and reacts to the same situations in the same way. The findings suggest that self-reports and Valence/Arousal estimations are not reliable measures to determine someone’s Comfortability and that external factors (e.g., attitude towards robots or the robot’s perception) might affect it. On top of that, a list of 28 visual features associated with low Comfortability levels is included, providing support to keep unraveling Comfortability in further studies. (shrink)