Genomic research results and incidental findings with health implications for a research participant are of potential interest not only to the participant, but also to the participant's family. Yet investigators lack guidance on return of results to relatives, including after the participant's death. In this paper, a national working group offers consensus analysis and recommendations, including an ethical framework to guide investigators in managing this challenging issue, before and after the participant's death.

Returning genomic research results to family members raises complex questions. Genomic research on life-limiting conditions such as cancer, and research involving storage and reanalysis of data and specimens long into the future, makes these questions pressing. This author group, funded by an NIH grant, published consensus recommendations presenting a framework. This follow-up paper offers concrete guidance and tools for implementation. The group collected and analyzed relevant documents and guidance, including tools from the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research Consortium. The authors then (...) negotiated a consensus toolkit of processes and documents. That toolkit offers sample consent and notification documents plus decision flow-charts to address return of results to family of living and deceased participants, in adult and pediatric research. Core concerns are eliciting participant preferences on sharing results with family and on choice of a representative to make decisions about sharing after participant death. (shrink)

This volume is the first book-length study on post-publication responses to academic plagiarism in humanities disciplines. It demonstrates that the correction of the scholarly literature for plagiarism is not a task for editors and publishers alone; each member of the research community has an indispensable role in maintaining the integrity of the published literature in the aftermath of plagiarism. If untreated, academic plagiarism damages the integrity of the scholarly record, corrupts the surrounding academic enterprise, and creates inefficiencies across all levels (...) of knowledge production. By providing case studies from the field of philosophy and related disciplines, the volume exhibits that current post-publication responses to academic plagiarism are insufficient. It catalogues how humanities disciplines fall short in comparison with the natural and biomedical sciences for ensuring the integrity of the body of published research. This volume provides clarity about how to conceptualize the scholarly record, surveys the traditional methods for correcting it, and argues for new interventions to improve the reliability of the body of published research. The book is valuable not only to those in the field of philosophy and other humanities disciplines, but also to those interested in research ethics, meta-science, and the sociology of research. (shrink)

Despite an increased recognition that plagiarism in published research can take many forms, current typologies of plagiarism are far from complete. One under-recognized variety of plagiarism—designated here as compression plagiarism—consists of the distillation of a lengthy scholarly text into a short one, followed by the publication of the short one under a new name with inadequate credit to the original author. In typical cases, compression plagiarism is invisible to unsuspecting readers and immune to anti-plagiarism software. The persistence of uncorrected instances (...) of plagiarism in all its forms—including compression plagiarism—in the body of published research literature has deleterious consequences for the reliability of scholarly communication. Not the least of these problems is that original authors are denied credit for their discoveries. When unsuspecting researchers read articles that are the products of plagiarism, they unwittingly engage the arguments of hidden original authors through the proxy of plagiarists. Furthermore, when these researchers later publish responses to the plagiarizing articles, not knowing they are engaging products of plagiarism, they create additional inefficiencies and redundancies in the body of published research. This article analyzes a suspected instance of compression plagiarism that appeared within the pages of this journal and considers the particular ways in which plagiarism of this variety weakens the quality of scholarly argumentation, with special attention paid to the field of philosophy. (shrink)

Individuals discovered to have engaged in serial plagiarism in philosophy are few, but the academic publishers falling victim to them are many. Some of the most respected publishing houses in philosophy have recently dealt with the problem of having published plagiarized material. The various responses by these publishers to an instance of serial plagiarism, one that involves forty-three articles and book chapters, provides a real-time snapshot of the practices for correcting the scholarly record. The analysis offered in this article yields (...) a twofold conclusion: first, there is relatively little uniformity among publishers in philosophy for responding to plagiarism; and second, in comparison with the natural sciences the discipline of philosophy often falls short of the accepted practices for correcting the scholarly record. The article considers only public, documented cases of academic plagiarism in philosophy and makes no new allegations of plagiarism. (shrink)

The history of moral dilemma theory often ignores the medieval period, overlooking the sophisticated theorizing by several thinkers who debated the existence of moral dilemmas from 1150 to 1450. In this book Michael V. Dougherty offers a rich and fascinating overview of the debates which were pursued by medieval philosophers, theologians and canon lawyers, illustrating his discussion with a diverse range of examples of the moral dilemmas which they considered. He shows that much of what seems particular to twentieth-century moral (...) theory was well-known long ago - especially the view of some medieval thinkers that some forms of wrongdoing are inescapable, and their emphasis on the principle 'choose the lesser of two evils'. His book will be valuable not only to advanced students and specialists of medieval thought, but also to those interested in the history of ethics. (shrink)

Purpose: Constructivism postulates that the perceived reality is a complex construct formed during development. Depending on the particular school, these inner constructs take on different forms and structures and affect cognition in different ways. The purpose of this article is to address the questions of how and, even more importantly, why we form such inner constructs. Approach: This article proposes that brain development is controlled by an inherent anticipatory drive, which biases learning towards the formation of forward predictive structures and (...) inverse goal-oriented control structures. This drive, in combination with increasingly complex environmental interactions during cognitive development, enforces the structuring of our conscious self, which is embedded in a constructed inner reality. Essentially, the following questions are addressed: Which basic mechanisms lead us to the construction of inner realities? How are these emergent inner realities structured? How is the self represented within the inner realities? And consequently, which cognitive structures constitute the media for conscious thought and selfconsciousness? Findings: Due to the anticipatory drive, representations in the brain shape themselves predominantly purposefully or intentionally. Taking a developmental, evolutionary perspective, we show how the brain is forced to develop progressively complex and abstract representations of the self embedded in the constructed inner realities. These self representations can evoke different stages of self-consciousness. Implications: The anticipatory drive shapes brain structures and cognition during the development of progressively more complex, competent, and flexible goal-oriented bodyenvironment interactions. Self-consciousness develops because increasingly abstract, individualizing self representations are necessary to realize these progressively more challenging environmental interactions. (shrink)

Ghazālī’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers is an unusual philosophical work for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the author’s explicit disavowalof any of the conclusions contained within it. The present essay examines some of the hermeneutical challenges that face readers of the work and offers anexegetical account of the much-neglected Third Discussion, which examines a key point of Neoplatonic metaphysics. The paper argues that Ghazālī’s maintaining of the incompatibility of metaphysical creationism and Neoplatonic emanationism should (...) not be viewed as simply a rhetorical or dialectical argument, but rather is best understood, to use Ghazālī’s words, as a philosophical “proof.” Essential to this proof in the solution to the argument of the Third Discussion is an implicit theory of metaphorical predication that can be pieced together from several of Ghazālī’s remarks as well as a reductio ad absurdum argument about the very possibility of ethical discourse. (shrink)

Qualitative fieldwork research on sensitive topics sometimes requires that interviewees be granted confidentiality and anonymity. When qualitative researchers later publish their findings, they must ensure that any statements obtained during fieldwork interviews cannot be traced back to the interviewees. Given these protections to interviewees, the integrity of the published findings cannot usually be verified or replicated by third parties, and the scholarly community must trust the word of qualitative researchers when they publish their results. This trust is fundamentally abused, however, (...) when researchers publish articles reporting qualitative fieldwork data that they never collected. Using only publicly available information, I argue that a 2017 article in an Elsevier foreign policy and international relations journal presents anonymised fieldwork interviews that could not have occurred as described. As an exercise in post-publication peer review (PPPR), this paper examines the evidence that calls into question the reliability of the putative fieldwork quotations. I show further that the 2017 article is not a unique case. The anonymity and confidentiality protections common in some areas of research create an ethical problem: the protections necessary for obtaining research data can be used as a cover to hide substandard research practices as well as research misconduct. (shrink)

This volume is the first book-length study of disguised forms of plagiarism that mar the body of published research in humanities disciplines. As a contribution to applied research ethics, this practical guide offers a typology of the principal forms of disguised plagiarism. It provides detailed analyses, in-depth case studies, and useful flow charts to assist researchers, editors, and publishers in protecting the integrity of the body of published research literature. Disguised plagiarism is more subtle than copy-and-paste plagiarism; all its varieties (...) involve some additional concealment that creates further distance between the plagiarizing text and its source. These disguised forms are the most difficult forms of plagiarism to detect. Readers of the volume will become acquainted with the subtler forms of plagiarism that corrupt the production and dissemination of knowledge in humanities fields. The book is valuable not only to those interested in research ethics, but also to those in humanities fields including philosophy, theology, and history. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that commentators have missed a significant clue given by Descartes in coming to understand his 'ontological' proof for the existence of God. In both the analytic and synthetic presentations of the proof throughout his writings, Descartes notes that the proof works 'in the same way' as a particular geometrical proof. I explore the significance of such a parallel, and conclude that Descartes could not have intended readers to think that the argument consists of some kind (...) of intuition. I argue that for Descartes the attribute of existence is a 'second-order' attribute that is demonstrated to belong to the idea of God on the basis of 'first-order' attributes. The proof, properly understood, is in fact a demonstration. Having brought to light the geometrical parallels between the ontological and geometrical proofs, we have new evidence to resolve the 'intuition versus demonstration' controversy that has characterized much of the discussion of Descartes's ontological argument. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to study the importance of Pushkin's work in the age of scientific and technological progress, to identify and analyze the moral values that accompany the work and personality of Alexander Pushkin and are particularly relevant to our time. The article discusses the moral values of honor and dignity, the ratio between good and evil, concepts of duty, justice, love and friendship, happiness, freedom, creativity, patriotism, national idea, peoples’ friendship and the problem of preserving Russian (...) language in modern Russia. The article is written through the prism of interpretation of Pushkin’s creativity by Russian philosophers abroad and modern philosophers. The article deals with the problem of using neural networks that make it possible to reproduce the style of A. S. Pushkin. The author concludes about the relevance of the work of A. S. Pushkin in our days. The issues of preserving spirituality, moral values, national identity, and optimistic Renaissance perception of the world, of understanding the beauty of life, remain relevant and in demand in modern age of rapid scientific and technical progress, both in Russia and in the world. (shrink)

Цель. Исследование направлено на получение данных об образе человека в исламе посредством осмысления соответствующих представлений как классических направлений мусульманской религии, так и установок мистического направления ислама – суфизма. Достижение данной цели предусматривает применение таких методов, как философский анализ, компаративный метод, феноменологию, а также последовательное решение следующих задач: а) проанализировать основные манифестации антропологических представлений ислама; б) осмыслить специфику мусульманских идей о человеке по сравнению с соответствующим христианским учением; в) рассмотреть разногласия между толкованием сущности и задач человека в классическом исламе и суфизме. (...) Теоретический базис. Автор исходит из неудовлетворительности поверхностного толкования проблемы образа человека в исламе, которое часто трактует человека исключительно как «раба Аллаха», упуская из виду двухмерность метафизического статуса человека в исламе, а также полипарадигмальнисть образа человека в разных направлениях ислама. Научная новизна. Автором уточнён образ человека в исламе в двух аспектах: во-первых, в аспекте его концептуального содержания, а во-вторых, в аспекте его парадигмального разнообразия. Выводы. Распространённые среди исследователей представления об антропологической компоненте ислама недостаточно основательны, поскольку часто они не учитывают неоднозначность и многомерность идей мусульманской религии относительно человека. Как было показано, общеисламские представления о метафизическом статусе человека включают в себя два измерения – человек толкуется как «раб Аллаха», а также как «наместник Аллаха». В рамках этого восприятия сущности человека имеются различные парадигмы толкования сферы преимущественного выполнения обязанностей человека как раба и наместника – экстерналистская и интерналистская. Было показано, что тема образа человека в исламе все еще недостаточно изучена и требует дальнейших исследований. Наиболее продуктивными направлениями этой дальнейшей исследовательской работы является осмысление имеющихся в салафистской и шиитской разновидностях ислама представлений о человеке, его сущности и задачах. (shrink)

The notion of the value of information is discussed. The value one attributes to information is determined by the result of its reception by an open nonequilibrium system. Qualitative reasoning shows that the concept of value of information makes sense only in nonequilibrium situations, and is directly connected with the nonredundancy of information. In biology it is the value and not the amount of information that is important. The value of information is especially high if there are instabilities in the (...) system; these are connected with the notions of purpose and of freedom of will. The notion of selective value, introduced by Eigen in the theory of the prebiological evolution of macromolecules, is discussed. The amount of information in various codons is calculated and the conventional definition of its value is given based on the determination of the danger of the replacement of one amino acid by another with a different value of hydrophobicity. It is shown that the relative probability of transversion is considerably lower than that of transition. As most nonsense mutations are transversions, the genetic code provides decreased probability for the most dangerous mutations. It is shown that the information of the codonUGG(Trp) is highest in both amount and value. (shrink)

Originally published in 1967. Locke's views in the field of education had great influence in the UK and abroad; and the aim of this book is to present them in the context of his general philosophical thinking, since it was mainly as a philosopher that Locke won his place in history. Because Locke was at the same time very much a man of affairs, and an interesting character on his own merits, the book gives a fairly full account of his (...) life and times. Some attention is paid to his relations with the brilliant political adventurer, Lord Shaftesbury, without whom Locke's own career would have been very different, and might not have offered the opportunities which led to his writings on education. The book seeks to emphasize the importance of Locke's empirical approach to truth - the method of modern science, without which the modern study of education, and the science of psychology in particular, would never have developed. (shrink)