The use of genetic technology in agriculture is viewed by some as the next frontier of farming but others may view it as a threat. The aim of the current study was to describe the views of experts working in agricultural genetics regarding how best to communicate genetic technology with a broader audience (e.g., clientele, the public). We recruited 10 experts working in roles that involve communication about genetic technology in agriculture. Using semi-structured interviews, we asked participants to describe how (...) they discuss this technology, who they discuss it with, and their thoughts on the involvement of various stakeholders in these discussions. Interview transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis and participant responses were organized into three themes: 1) Communicating and framing genetic technology, including discussing risks, benefits, and applications, distinguishing technology from other similar technologies, and engaging in value-based discussions; 2) Challenges of public communication, including misinformation and opposing opinions, conflation with older technologies, and balancing information provision; and 3) Stakeholder involvement in discussions, which included views on how different groups (e.g., activists, farmers, and scientists) should be included in discussions, and who is best suited to discuss genetic technology with the public. We conclude that leaders in agricultural genetics engage in a variety of approaches to communicate genetic technology, using different frames that they feel are likely to appeal to their audience, and differ in their opinions of who should be involved in these discussions. (shrink)

There are many ongoing debates within the scientific and ethical communities about the subject of animal welfare. This book distills some of the major themes of current debate into one volume, edited by internationally known names in the field of animal welfare. Each chapter is written by one or more leading experts who discuss, in an even-handed way, a provocative topic that will be of interest to anyone concerned with animal welfare. Issues covered include tail docking, farm animal production, neutering (...) of feral cats and the need to conserve habitats of native wild animals in the face of threats from non-native species. Chapters address the different values and priorities involved in dealing with these issues, including scientific and more explicit ethical approaches. Each chapter ends with questions for discussion that may help readers to engage with these dilemmas. (shrink)

Calls for public engagement on emerging agricultural technologies, including genetic engineering of farm animals, have resulted in the development of information that people can interact and engage with online, including “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQs) developed by organizations seeking to inform or influence the debate. We conducted a frame analysis of FAQs webpages about genetic engineering of farm animals developed by different organizations to describe how questions and answers are presented. We categorized FAQs as having a regulatory frame (emphasizing or challenging (...) the adequacy of regulations), an efficiency frame (emphasizing precision and benefits), a risks and uncertainty frame (emphasizing unknown outcomes), an animal welfare frame (emphasizing benefits for animals) or an animal dignity frame (considering the inherent value of animals). Animals were often featured as the object of regulations in FAQs, and questions about animals were linked to animal welfare regulations. The public were represented using a variety of terms (public, consumer) and pronouns (I, we). Some FAQs described differences between technology terms (gene editing, genetic modification) and categorized technologies as either well-established or novel. This framing of the technology may not respond to actual public concerns on the topic. Organizations seeking to use FAQs as a public engagement tool might consider including multiple viewpoints and actual questions people have about genetic engineering. (shrink)

Public opinion can affect the adoption of genome editing technologies. In food production, genome editing can be applied to a wide range of applications, in different species and with different purposes. This study analyzed how the public responds to five different applications of genome editing, varying the species involved and the proposed purpose of the modification. Three of the applications described the introduction of disease resistance within different species, and two targeted product quality and quantity in cattle. Online surveys in (...) Canada, the US, Austria, Germany and Italy were carried out with a total sample size of 3698 participants. Using a between-subject design, participants were confronted with one of the five applications and asked to decide whether they considered it right or wrong. Perceived risks, benefits, and the perception of the technology as tampering with nature were surveyed and were complemented with socio-demographics and a measure of the participants’ moral foundations. In all countries, participants evaluated the application of disease resistance in humans as most right to do, followed by disease resistance in plants, and then in animals, and considered changes in product quality and quantity in cattle as least right to do. However, US and Italian participants were generally more positive toward all scenarios, and German and Austrian participants more negative. Cluster analyses identified four groups of participants: ‘strong supporters’ who saw only benefits and little risks, ‘slight supporters’ who perceived risks and valued benefits, ‘neutrals’ who showed no pronounced opinion, and ‘opponents’ who perceived higher risks and lower benefits. This research contributes to understanding public response to applications of genome editing, revealing differences that can help guide decisions related to adoption of these technologies. (shrink)

Reading these essays has shown me a great deal, both about the substantive issues I have dealt with and about how to do philosophy. On the former front, they show that I have missed some points and overstated others, and sometimes just been unable to penetrate the fog. On the latter front, they show how hard it is to write philosophy that works--and this is the point that stands out for me as I reflect on these rich and varied essays. (...) Philosophical books and articles routinely fail to achieve their manifest goal of persuading their intended audiences of their main points. Does this make philosophy any worse off than other writing endeavors? Most published novels are failures of one sort or another, and the press has reported a recent study (whose methodology I wonder about) that concludes that the median number of readers of any paper published in a psychology journal is zero. But it seems to me that philosophy displays a particularly feckless record, with such a huge gap between authorial pretense and effect achieved that it is perhaps more comic than pathetic. In one weak moment I found myself thinking that perhaps some of our French colleagues have the right idea: deliberate obscurantism and the striking of stylized poses--since the goal of persuading by clear, precise analysis and argument is so manifestly beyond us. But that worldly weariness passed, I'm happy to say, and my cock-eyed American optimism returned. My ambition continues to be to change people's minds, and not just to win people over to my way of doing philosophy, as Bo Dahlbom suggests. But I admit that it is harder than I had thought. It's hard enough to get a good idea, but sometimes it's even harder, apparently, to get others to see what the idea is, and why it's good. (shrink)

Fantasies of Flight invigorates the field of personality psychology by challenging the contemporary academic view that individuals are best studied as carriers of traits. Daniel Ogilvie exchanges a heart-to-heart, case study approach to understanding human behavior for the current strategies of categorizing and comparing individuals according to their manifest traits. Ogilvie asks and endeavors to answer questions like "What were the psychological conditions that led Sir James Barrie to create a character named Peter Pan?" and "What were the dynamics (...) behind the Marshall Herff Applewhite's conviction that a space ship, hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, would rescue him and his Heaven's Gate followers after they enacted a mass suicide pact in 1997?" Answering these questions requires him to resurrect "old" ways to think about personality and "old" strategies for studying individuals one by one. Early in the book, Ogilvie reviews the history of why intensive case studies were discredited in psychology and describes how Sigmund Freud's psychobiographical account of Leonardo da Vinci's fascination with flight inadvertently abetted critics of psychoanalytic psychology. He then performs a partial psychobiography of James Barrie and the origins of Peter Pan, followed by an investigation of Carl Jung, who fashioned the collective unconscious to serve as humankind's link to eternity. Arguing that personality psychology needs to become less insular, Ogilvie integrates information from the disciplines of developmental psychology and neuroscience into a theory regarding the latent needs that both Barrie and Jung sought to satisfy. The theory, including its emphasis on the onset of self and consciousness, is then applied to an array of well-known and obscure individuals with ascensionistic inclinations. Well written and accessible, but complex and scholarly, this volume will restore interest in the investigation of people's inner lives. (shrink)

Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks,watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, DanielDennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective.

The 1996 European Summer Meeting of the Association of Symbolic Logic was held held the University of the Basque Country, at Donostia (San Se bastian) Spain, on July 9-15, 1996. It was organised by the Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI) and the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Sciences of the University of the Basque Coun try. It was supported by: the University of Pais Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unib ertsitatea, the Ministerio de Education y Ciencia (DGCYT), Hezkuntza Saila (...) (Eusko Jaurlaritza), Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia, and Kuxta Fun dazioa. The main topics of the meeting were Model Theory, Proof Theory, Re cursion and Complexity Theory, Models of Arithmetic, Logic for Artifi cial Intelligence, Formal Semantics of Natural Language and Philosophy of Contemporary Logic. The Program Committee consisted of K. Ambos Spies (Heidelberg), J.L. Balcazar (Barcelona), J.E. Fenstad (Oslo), D. Israel (Stanford), H. Kamp (Stuttgart), R. Kaye (Birmingham), J.M. Larrazabal (San Sebastian), D. Lascar (Paris, chairman), A. Marcja (Firenze), G. Mints (Stanford), M. Otero (Madrid), S. Ronchi della Rocca (Torino), K. Segerberg (Uppsala) and L. Vega (Madrid). The organizing Committee consisted of X. Arrazola (San Sebastian), A. Arrieta (San Sebastian), R. Beneyeto (Valencia), B. Carrascal (San Se bastian), K. Korta (San Sebastian), J.M. Larrazabal (San Sebastian, chair man), J.C. Martinez (Barcelona), J.M. Mendez (Salamanca), F. Migura (Victoria) and J. Perez (Victoria). (shrink)

Volume 35 contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2018-19. Works: Commentary on _De Anima_, Nicomachean Ethics. Topics: Humean motivation, memory-oblivion & myth, final causality and ontology of life.

This article investigates the role of privacy and transparency in the 4th Space and outlines their implications for the development and dissemination of conspiracy theories. We argue that privacy can be exploited by individuals and organizations to spread conspiracy theories online, while organizational transparency, intended to increase accountability and ultimately trust, can have the adverse effect and nurture conspiracy beliefs. Through the lens of the 4th Space concept, we offer suggestions on how to approach those challenges which emerge as a (...) result of the complex entanglements of both actual and virtual world across time. (shrink)

Marr’s celebrated contribution to cognitive science (Marr 1982, chap. 1) was the introduction of (at least) three levels of description/explanation. However, most contemporary research has relegated the distinction between levels to a rather dispensable remark. Ignoring such an important contribution comes at a price, or so we shall argue. In the present paper, first we review Marr’s main points and motivations regarding levels of explanation. Second, we examine two cases in which the distinction between levels has been neglected when considering (...) the structure of mental representations: Cummins et al.’s distinction between structural representation and encodings (Cummins in Journal of Philosophy, 93(12):591–614, 1996; Cummins et al. in Journal of Philosophical Research, 30:405–408, 2001) and Fodor’s account of iconic representation (Fodor 2008). These two cases illustrate the kind of problems in which researchers can find themselves if they overlook distinctions between levels and how easily these problems can be solved when levels are carefully examined. The analysis of these cases allows us to conclude that researchers in the cognitive sciences are well advised to avoid risks of confusion by respecting Marr’s old lesson. (shrink)

In the past two to three decades health behavior scientists have increasingly emphasized affect-related concepts (including, but not limited to emotion) in their attempts to understand and facilitate change in important health behaviors, such as smoking, eating, physical activity, substance abuse, and sex. This article provides a narrative review of this burgeoning literature, including relevant theory and research on affective response (e.g., hedonic response to eating and drug use), incidental affect (e.g., work-related stress as a determinant of alcohol use), affect (...) processing (e.g., anticipated regret for illicit sex or skipping an exercise session), and affectively charged motivation (e.g., cigarette craving). An integrative dual-processing framework is presented that suggests pathways through which affect-related concepts may interrelate to influence health behavior. (shrink)

Contempt is typically studied as a uniquely human moral emotion. However, this approach has yielded inconclusive results. We argue this is because the folk affect concept “contempt” has been inaccurately mapped onto basic affect systems. “Contempt” has features that are inconsistent with a basic emotion, especially its protracted duration and frequently cold phenomenology. Yet other features are inconsistent with a basic attitude. Nonetheless, the features of “contempt” functionally cohere. To account for this, we revive and reconfigure thesentimentconstruct using the notion (...) of evolved functional specialization. We develop the Attitude–Scenario–Emotion (ASE) model of sentiments, in which enduring attitudes represent others' social-relational value and moderate discrete emotions across scenarios. Sentiments are functional networks of attitudes and emotions. Distinct sentiments, includinglove,respect,like,hate, andfear, track distinct relational affordances, and each is emotionally pluripotent, thereby serving both bookkeeping and commitment functions within relationships. The sentimentcontemptis an absence ofrespect; from cues to others' low efficacy, it represents them as worthless and small, mutingcompassion,guilt, andshameand potentiatinganger,disgust, andmirth. This sentiment is ancient yet implicated in the ratcheting evolution of human ultrasocialty. The manifolds of thecontemptnetwork, differentially engaged across individuals and populations, explain the features of “contempt,” its translatability, and its variable experience as “hot” or “cold,” occurrent or enduring, and anger-like or disgust-like. This rapprochement between psychological anthropology and evolutionary psychology contributes both methodological and empirical insights, with broad implications for understanding the functional and cultural organization of social affect. (shrink)

This paper is the first of two in a series. In this paper, we identify mental health needs and challenges in the age of COVID-19 among Nepali-speaking, Bhutanese resettled refugees in the USA. We argue for a public health justice framework that looks critically at social determinants impacting mental health (SDIMH) barriers, which negatively impact our Bhutanese population, and serves as a theoretical foundation toward public policy and law that will inform healthcare decisions and fair treatment of resettled refugees at (...) the clinical bedside and in the community. We first describe our Bhutanese refugee population and the critical mental health issues that, for many, originated during political persecution and violent ethnic cleansing initiatives, or while living in refugee camps prior to resettlement to the USA. We present a social justice framework emerging from an extensive literature review and incorporating core social determinants specific to mental health in the age of COVID-19, which are guided by the social determinants of economic stability; neighborhoods and physical environment; education; nutrition and exercise; community and social context; healthcare system; and legal system. We illustrate specific SDIMH of our resettled Bhutanese refugees during the pandemic, followed by a second paper that details recommendations for applying the SDIMH in a collective effort to address specific barriers to mental healthcare and support. (shrink)

This critical note responds to Guiaşu and Tindale’s “Logical fallacies and invasion biology,” from our perspective as ecologists and philosophers of science engaged in debates about invasion biology and invasive species. We agree that “the level of charges and dismissals” surrounding these debates might be “unhealthy” and that “it will be very difficult for dialogues to move forward unless genuine attempts are made to understand the positions being held and to clarify the terms involved.” Although they raise several important scientific, (...) conceptual, and ethical issues at the foundations of invasion biology, we believe Guiaşu and Tindale’s attempts to clarify the debate were unsuccessful. Like some other critics of the field, they tend to misrepresent invasion biology by cherry-picking and constructing “straw people,” inaccurately portraying invasion biology, and thus failing to elevate the dialogue. In this critique, we clarify areas in the invasion biology literature misrepresented by Guiaşu and Tindale. We attempt to provide a more balanced view of areas of reasonable debate within invasion biology, including disputes about empirical evidence, diverse risk attitudes, and other diverse ethical commitments. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the most common state policy responses to the opioid crisis, dividing them into six broad categories. Within each category we highlight the rationale behind the group of policies within it, discuss the details and support for individual policies, and explore the research base behind them. The objective is to better understand the most prevalent state responses to the opioid crisis.

Discussions surrounding patient engagement and empowerment often use the terms “patient” and “consumer” interchangeably. But do the two terms hold the same meaning, or is a “patient” a passive actor in the health care arena and a “consumer” an informed, rational decision-maker? Has there been a shift in our usage of the two terms that aligns with the increasing commercialization of health care in the U.S. or has the patient/consumer dynamic always been a part of the buying and selling of (...) health care in the American system? Recent discussions of the issue exist in the popular press and in social media forums such as TEDMED, but few direct analyses of the ethical, legal, and policy ramifications of this possible shift in terminology are available in the academic literature. This paper analyzes our usage of the terms and any recent changes in the dynamic and discusses the ethical, legal, and policy implications of this simple terminology for the physicianpatient relationship. (shrink)

We have synthesized a 582,970-base pair Mycoplasma genitalium genome. This synthetic genome, named M. genitalium JCVI-1.0, contains all the genes of wild-type M. genitalium G37 except MG408, which was disrupted by an antibiotic marker to block pathogenicity and to allow for selection. To identify the genome as synthetic, we inserted "watermarks" at intergenic sites known to tolerate transposon insertions. Overlapping "cassettes" of 5 to 7 kilobases (kb), assembled from chemically synthesized oligonucleotides, were joined by in vitro recombination to produce intermediate (...) assemblies of approximately 24 kb, 72 kb ("1/8 genome"), and 144 kb ("1/4 genome"), which were all cloned as bacterial artificial chromosomes in Escherichia coli. Most of these intermediate clones were sequenced, and clones of all four 1/4 genomes with the correct sequence were identified. The complete synthetic genome was assembled by transformation-associated recombination cloning in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, then isolated and sequenced. A clone with the correct sequence was identified. The methods described here will be generally useful for constructing large DNA molecules from chemically synthesized pieces and also from combinations of natural and synthetic DNA segments. 10.1126/science.1151721. (shrink)

The resting-state human electroencephalogram power spectrum is dominated by alpha and theta oscillations, and also includes non-oscillatory broadband activity inversely related to frequency. Gratton proposed that alpha and theta oscillations are both related to cognitive control function, though in a complementary manner. Alpha activity is hypothesized to facilitate the maintenance of representations, such as task sets in preparation for expected task conditions. In contrast, theta activity would facilitate changes in representations, such as the updating of task sets in response to (...) unpredicted task demands. Therefore, theta should be related to reactive control, while alpha may be more relevant to proactive control. Less is known about the possible relationship between 1/f activity and cognitive control, which was analyzed here in an exploratory fashion. To investigate these hypothesized relationships, we recorded eyes-open and eyes-closed resting-state EEG from younger and older adults and subsequently tested their performance on a cued flanker task, expected to elicit both proactive and reactive control processes. Results showed that alpha power and 1/f offset were smaller in older than younger adults, whereas theta power did not show age-related reductions. Resting alpha power and 1/f offset were associated with proactive control processes, whereas theta power was related to reactive control as measured by the cued flanker task. All associations were present over and above the effect of age, suggesting that these resting-state EEG correlates could be indicative of trait-like individual differences in cognitive control performance, which may be already evident in younger adults, and are still similarly present in healthy older adults. (shrink)

The case presents a teenage girl, Sam*, in the end stages of a rare disease, with no proven therapeutic options and an investigational hematopoietic stem cell transplant has been offered thr...

We extend the notion of limitwise monotonic functions to include arbitrary computable domains. We then study which sets and degrees are support increasing limitwise monotonic on various computable domains. As applications, we provide a characterization of the sets S with computable increasing η-representations using support increasing limitwise monotonic sets on ℚ and note relationships between the class of order-computable sets and the class of support increasing limitwise monotonic sets on certain domains.

ZusammenfassungDie demografische Entwicklung und der medizinische Fortschritt werden die Problematik der Ressourcenknappheit im Gesundheitswesen in Zukunft weiter verschärfen. Auch Deutschland steht eine Prioritätensetzung im Gesundheitswesen bevor. Diese sollte in möglichst transparenter Weise nach klaren Kriterien erfolgen. Ein nur selten in diesem Kontext besprochenes Kriterium der Verteilung von Mitteln in der Gesundheitsversorgung ist die marginale Wirksamkeit medizinischer Leistungen. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird dieses Kriterium vorgestellt und auf seine Fairness hin untersucht. Nach der kritischen Diskussion einiger Argumente gegen den offenen Einsatz von (...) Rationierungskriterien und einer Definition von marginaler Wirksamkeit in zwei unterschiedlichen Dimensionen werden verschiedene Vorzüge und eventuelle Nachteile des Kriteriums beleuchtet. (shrink)

Despite social epistemologists’ condemnation of epistemic bubbles (Nguyen, 2018; Miller & Record, 2013; Pariser 2011; Simpson, 2012; Sunstein 2017), we defend that they may be epistemically beneficial for marginalized communities, especially when they help insiders to make sense of their lived experiences, that is, acquiring hermeneutical resources. Building on the previous work of Anderson (2021), Sunstein (2017) and Frost-Arnold (2021), who have already highlighted the epistemic benefits of certain bubbles, we focus on the case of Cystic Fibrosis (CF), a chronic (...) illness with severe symptoms, whose patients face difficulties to understand their own experience (for example, what being ‘young’ means with a reduced life expectancy). We then explain how they engage in what we assess as, following Medina & Whitt (2021), “epistemic activism” in a Facebook group meant for patients to share and interact with their favourite CF-related memes. The case illustrates how conditions of isolation and technological affordances contribute to a hermeneutical gain in the marginalized community (augmenting the community’s agency, amplificating their voices, and allowing them to develop and exercise their epistemic capacities). Lastly, we present the ethical guidelines (inspired in Frost-Arnold 2023) we have followed to engage in this sort of online research. (shrink)

With the advent of powerful parallel computers, efforts have commenced to simulate complete mammalian brains. However, so far none of these efforts has produced outcomes close to explaining even the behavioral complexities of animals. In this article, we suggest four challenges that ground this shortcoming. First, we discuss the connection between hypothesis testing and simulations. Typically, efforts to simulate complete mammalian brains lack a clear hypothesis. Second, we treat complications related to a lack of parameter constraints for large-scale simulations. To (...) demonstrate the severity of this issue, we review work on two small-scale neural systems, the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion and the Caenorhabditis elegans nervous system. Both of these small nervous systems are very thoroughly, but not completely understood, mainly due to issues with variable and plastic parameters. Third, we discuss the hierarchical structure of neural systems as a principled obstacle to whole-brain simulations. Different organizational levels imply qualitative differences not only in structure, but in choice and appropriateness of investigative technique and perspective. The challenge of reconciling different levels also undergirds the challenge of simulating and hypothesis testing, as modeling a system is not the same thing as simulating it. Fourth, we point out that animal brains are information processing systems tailored very specifically for the ecological niches the respective animals live in. (shrink)

California has focused on health equity in the state’s COVID-19 reopening plan. The Blueprint for a Safer Economy assigns each of California’s 58 counties into 1 of 4 tiers based on 2 metrics: test positivity rate and adjusted case rate. To advance to the next less-restrictive tier, counties must meet that tier’s test positivity and adjusted case rate thresholds. In addition, counties must have a plan for targeted investments within disadvantaged communities, and counties with more than 106 000 residents must (...) meet an equity metric. California's explicit incorporation of health equity into its reopening plan underscores the interrelated fate of its residents during the COVID-19 pandemic and creates incentives for action. This article evaluates the benefits and challenges of this novel health equity focus, and outlines recommendations for other US states to address disparities in their reopening plans. (shrink)

Team reasoning gives a simple, coherent, and rational explanation for human cooperative behavior. This paper investigates the robustness of team reasoning as an explanation for cooperative behavior, by assessing its long-run viability. We consider an evolutionary game theoretic model in which the population consists of team reasoners and ‘conventional’ individual reasoners. We find that changes in the ludic environment can affect evolutionary outcomes, and that in many circumstances, team reasoning may thrive, even under conditions that, at first glance, may seem (...) unfavorable. We also pursue several extensions that augment the basic account, and conclude that team reasoning is an evolutionarily viable mechanism with the potential to explain behavior in a range of human interactions. (shrink)

Processing of emotional speech in the absence of visual information relies on two auditory channels: semantics and prosody. No study to date has investigated how blindness impacts this process. Two theories, Perceptual Deficit, and Sensory Compensation, yiled different expectations about the role of visual experience (or its lack thereof) in processing emotional speech. To test the effect of vision and early visual experience on processing of emotional speech, we compared individuals with congenital blindness (CB, n = 17), individuals with late (...) blindness (LB, n = 15), and sighted controls (SC, n = 21) on identification and selective-attention of semantic and prosodic spoken-emotions. Results showed that individuals with blindness performed at least as well as SC, supporting Sensory Compensation and the role of cortical reorganisation. Individuals with LB outperformed individuals with CB, in accordance with Perceptual Deficit, supporting the role of early visual experience. The LB advantage was moderated by executive functions (working-memory). Namely, the advantage was erased for individuals with CB who showed higher levels of executive functions. Results suggest that vision is not necessary for processing of emotional speech, but early visual experience could improve it. The findings support a combination of the two aforementioned theories and reject a dichotomous view of deficiencies/enhancements of blindness. (shrink)