Clinical gene transfer research has both a unique history and a complex and layered system of research oversight, featuring a unique review body, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. This paper briefly describes the process of decision-making about clinical GTR, considers whether the questions, problems, and issues raised in clinical GTR are unique, and concludes by examining whether the RAC's oversight is a useful model that should be reproduced for other similar areas of clinical research.Clinical GTR is governed by the same (...) oversight system as most clinical trials, with a significant addition: the RAC. Like other research with human subjects, GTR, if it is affiliated with a federally funded institution, must be approved by an institutional review board whose activities are governed by the common rule, that is, the federal regulations for protection of human subjects in research. Like other research intended to produce a drug, device, or biologic to be marketed in the United States, GTR is also overseen by the Food and Drug Administration. (shrink)

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are widely taken as the gold standard for establishing causal conclusions. Ideally conducted they ensure that the treatment ‘causes’ the outcome—in the experiment. But where else? This is the venerable question of external validity. I point out that the question comes in two importantly different forms: Is the specific causal conclusion warranted by the experiment true in a target situation? What will be the result of implementing the treatment there? This paper explains how the probabilistic theory (...) of causality implies that RCTs can establish causal conclusions and thereby provides an account of what exactly that causal conclusion is. Clarifying the exact form of the conclusion shows just what is necessary for it to hold in a new setting and also how much more is needed to see what the actual outcome would be there were the treatment implemented. (shrink)

Various argumentation analysis tools permit the analyst to represent functional components of an argument (e.g., data, claim, warrant, backing), how arguments are composed of subarguments and defenses against potential counterarguments, and argumentation schemes. In order to facilitate a study of argument presentation in a biomedical corpus, we have developed a hybrid scheme that enables an analyst to encode argumentation analysis within the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), which can be used to represent the discourse structure of a text. This (...) paper describes the hybrid representation scheme and illustrates its use for investigation of contexts that license omission of elements of an argument. The analyses given in the paper involve reconstruction of enthymemes. Defeasible argumentation schemes serve as a constraint on reconstruction. In addition, the examples illustrate several other types of contextual constraints on reconstruction of enthymemes. (shrink)

This paper proposes an essentially theoretical reflection on initial training, a reflection based on four fundamental concepts: professional development, professional identity, well-being and strengths of character. More specifically, recognizing the complexity of the teaching profession, the authors argue that the teacher training in Quebec gives too little room for self-reflection. According to them, this reflection should be based on a search for meaning in terms of a vision of well-being. Positive psychology research on strengths of character may provide useful avenues (...) for rethinking teacher education. (shrink)

The question of whether fluid intelligence can be differentiated from general intelligence in older adults is addressed. Data indicate that the developmental pattern of performance on fluid tasks differs from the pattern of general intelligence. These results suggest that it is important to identify changes in fluid cognitive functions associated with frontal lobe decline, as they may be early indicators of cognitive decline. (Published Online April 5 2006).

For evidence-based practice and policy, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are the current gold standard. But exactly why? We know that RCTs do not, without a series of strong assumptions, warrant predictions about what happens in practice. But just what are these assumptions? I maintain that, from a philosophical stance, answers to both questions are obscured because we don't attend to what causal claims say. Causal claims entering evidence-based medicine at different points say different things and, I would suggest, failure to (...) attend to these differences makes much current guidance about evidence for medical and social policy misleading. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 7, Page 802-808, September 2022.

The prospect of rescuing a person in immediate peril seems at first glance to be an unqualified good. Take, for example, the events of April 15, 2013, at the 117th Boston Marathon. Two consecutive...

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 22, Issue 2, Page 112-122, June 2022.

First-in-human research has several characteristics that require special attention with respect to ethics and human subjects protections. At least some nanomedical technologies may also have characteristics that merit special attention in clinical research, as other papers in this symposium show. This paper considers how to address these characteristics in the consent form and process for FIH nanomedicine research, focusing principally on experimental nanotherapeutic interventions but also considering nanodiagnostic interventions.It is essential, as a starting point, to recognize that the consent form (...) and process are by no means the primary protectors of human subjects. Instead, consideration of the form and content of informed consent becomes relevant only after a clinical trial has been reviewed and deemed scientifically and ethically acceptable.Two convergent types of challenges to informed consent are posed by nanomedicine FIH research. First, some issues appear generally applicable to FIH research, but have specific nanomedicine implications. (shrink)

Contemporary accounts of individual self-formation struggle to articulate a mode of subjectivity not determined by relations of power. In response to this dilemma, Foucault's late lectures on the ancient ethical practices of "fearless speech" (parrhesia) offer a model of ethical self-governance that educates individuals to ethical and political engagement. Rooted in the psychological capacities of curiosity and resolve, such self-governance equips individuals with a "disposition to steadiness" that orients individuals in the face of uncertainty. The practices of parrhesia accomplish this (...) task without fabricating a distinction between internal soul and external body; by creating not a "body of knowledge" but a "body of practices"; and without reference to an external order such as nature, custom, tradition, or religion. The result is an "expressive subject" defined through expressive practices sustained by a simultaneous relationship to herself and to others. Individuals develop themselves not through their ability to "dare to know" but as those who "dare to act.". (shrink)

This essay explores the nexus between Buddhist discourse, moral reasoning, and aspects of indigenous ethnopsychology in a Shan community in northern Thailand. I suggest that these three strands of thought are routinely braided together in intricate ways and, furthermore, that some version of this conceptual arrangement is necessary in order for any moral thinking to take place. That is, all moral thought entails some conception of the way the world is structured (a conception that may or may not be based (...) on religion) and some ethnotheory of human nature, both of which are culturally mediated. Finally, I discuss the implications of this view for our understanding of human agency and autonomy. (shrink)

This chapter gives a concrete example of a question of current scientific interest where capacities matter: ‘Do the Bell inequalities describing Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen experiments show that causality is incompatible with quantum mechanics?’ The question cannot be answered if we rely on probabilistic theories of causality and laws of associations alone. It takes the concept of capacity and related notions of how capacities operate even to formulate the problem correctly. Econometrics models with correlated errors, it is shown, can explain the EPR results (...) when the correlations are given a capacity interpretation. (shrink)

In his article, "Is Essentialism Unscientific?" (1988), Jarrett Leplin claims that I do not have sufficient grounds for rejecting the customary "philosophical method of discovery" that allows for the direct transfer of theories developed in the philosophy of language to science. While admitting that all attempts at transfer thus far have failed, he still maintains that method is sound. I argue that the wholesale failure of these attempts is reason enough to suspect the method and to try to devise one (...) more suitable to fathoming how "meaning", "reference", and "meaning change" are to be understood for scientific theories. The method I have proposed in Nersessian (1984b), and subsequent work, demands that we learn how to incorporate the actual practices of meaning construction in science into our analyses. Leplin distorts my analysis and, thus, fails to understand the insights that study provides. (shrink)

The Human Genome Project has allowed researchers to gain new insights into the genetic causes of health and disease. With this knowledge comes the potential to develop new genetic tests that are capable of predicting the risk of disease or disability among presently healthy individuals. This information is potentially beneficial in that it may allow individuals to develop strategies to reduce their risk of illness and may allow health providers to recognize and treat the early stages of disease more effectively. (...) As knowledge about genetic contributions to disease continues to grow and genetic testing technology becomes more widespread, there is a risk that personal genetic information could be used in ways potentially concerning to consumers. Genetic testing technology could potentially be used to discriminate against individuals in terms of their ability to obtain health, life, and disability insurance. Decreased access to insurance, in turn, significantly hinders access to health care and income for oneself and/or for one's dependent. (shrink)

Four distinguished authors have been brought together to produce this elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book is divided into three sections: Neurath's biographical background and the economic and social context of his ideas; his theory of science; and the development of his role in debates on Marxist concepts of history and his own conception of science. Coinciding with the emerging serious interest in logical positivism, this timely publication will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of (...) science. (shrink)

Carpendale & Lewis (C&L) emphasize the importance of viewing language as activity. In this commentary I push further their claim by highlighting how constructions, rather than words, are the appropriate unit of analysis. In addition, I suggest how a discussion of indexicality paves the way for a better understanding of how language provides a powerful tool for children's construction of mind.

While people are still alive, we owe them respect. Yet what, if anything, do we owe the newly dead? This question is an urgent practical concern for aged societies, because older people die at higher rates than any other age group. One novel way in which Japan, the frontrunner of aged societies, meets its need to accommodate high numbers of newly dead is itai hoteru or corpse hotels. Itai hoteru offer families a way to wait for space in over‐crowded crematoriums (...) while affording an environment conducive to grieving. Drawing on conversations with itai hoteru employees, we delineate the values this contemporary death practice expresses and show how these values comprise part of the broader idea of a good death. A good death implies duties on both sides of death's divide: to both the dying and the newly dead. (shrink)

In 1997, the United States incarcerated over 1.7 million persons in local jails and in state and federal prisons. These inmates are disproportionately poor and persons of color. Many lack adequate access to health care before incarceration and present to correctional services with major unaddressed medical problems.Convictions for drug possession and use have increased the number of injection drug users with HIV and AIDS in prisons. Determinate sentencing and “three strikes and you’re out” laws have increased the number of inmates (...) who are aging and dying during their sentences. Their feelings reflect those of Larry Rideau, sentenced to life without parole and founder of The Angolite—an award-winning prison newspaper at Louisiana's Angola Prison—“The dream of getting out, you equate with heaven. Dying in prison you equate with hell.”. (shrink)

This article presents a close reading of Ibn ʿAsākir’s biography of ʿUmar II in the Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq. Although there was an earlier and substantial historiographical tradition, Ibn ʿAsākir’s biography is distinct from those of his predecessors in two major ways. First, he strategically arranged his biography to emphasize or de-emphasize certain aspects of ʿUmar II’s life, including his youth, rise to the caliphate, and reputation as a redeemer. Second, Ibn ʿAsākir’s legitimizing historiography appears to be bi-directional. Namely, where earlier (...) biographers depicted ʿUmar II as the “fifth of the Rāshidūn,” bolstering the later Umayyad’s reputation through an association with earlier authorities, in Ibn ʿAsākir’s account problematic aspects of the early civil wars and fitna-ridden Rāshidūn period are also elided through the Rāshidūn’s association with the famously pious ʿUmar II. The context for this bi-directionality is to be found in the political and social environment in which Ibn ʿAsākir compiled his Tārīkh, where dual pressure from Crusader and Shiʿite opponents contributed to his articulation of a particular Sunni vision of political and religious continuity that relied heavily on ‘Umar II’s unique persona. (shrink)

A good many models used in physics and economics offer descriptions of imaginary situations, using a combination of mathematics and natural language. The descriptions are both thin - not much about the situation is filled in - and unrealistic - what is filled in is not true of many real situations. Yet we want to use the results of these models to inform our conclusions about a range of actually occurring situations. I propose we interpret many of these models as (...) fables. The actual happenings in the model are only one concrete instantiation of a lesson that is more widely applicable ‘when expressed in more abstract language.' A fable generally comes with the abstract lesson attached; parables, by contrast, usually require an interpretation from outside. Models, then, tend to be more like parables than fables. The right abstract interpretation is not supplied by the model itself. The central problem, then, is where shall it come from? (shrink)

The argument of this article is that, philosophically, there are but three broad conceptual models that Western thought employs in thinking about the meaning of God. At the level of greatest generality, these are the models known as classical theism, pantheism, and panentheism. The essay surveys and updates these three conceptual models in light of recent writings, finds more flaws in classical theism and panentheism than in pantheism, and suggests a feminist response to each.

Much of the attention of philosophy of science, history of science, and psychology in the twentieth century has focused on the nature of conceptual change. Conceptual change in science has occupied pride of place in these disciplines, as either the subject of inquiry or the source of ideas about the nature of conceptual change in other domains. There have been numerous conceptual changes in the history of science, some more radical than others. One of the most radical was the chemical (...) revolution. In the seventeenth century, chemists believed that the processes of combustion and calcination involved the absorption or release of a substance called phlogiston. On this theory, when an ore is heated with charcoal, it absorbs phlogiston to produce a metal; when a metal is burned, it releases phlogiston and leaves behind a residue, or calx. The concept of phlogiston derived from a quite complex Aristotelian/medieval structure that included three concepts central to chemical theory: sulphur, the principle of inflammability; mercury, the principle of fluidity; and salt, the principle of inertness. All material substances were believed to contain these three principles in the form of earths. The phlogiston theory held that in combustion, the sulphurous earth (phlogiston) returns to the substance from which it escaped during some earlier burning process in its history, and that in calcination the process is reversed. However, chemists also knew that a calx is heavier than the metal from which it was derived. So, the theory implies that phlogiston has a negative weight, or a positive lightness. This did not present a problem, though, because it was compatible with the Aristotelian elements of fire and air (the others being earth and water), which were not attracted towards the center of the earth. The development of the oxygen theory of combustion and calcination by Lavoisier in the late eighteenth century has been called the chemical revolution because it required replacing the whole conceptual structure with, for example, different concepts of substance and element and new concepts of oxygen and caloric. In the new system, it was no longer possible to believe in the existence of substances with negative weight. According to the oxygen theory, oxygen gas is released in combustion and absorbed in calcination. Thus calx is metal (substance) plus oxygen, rather than metal minus phlogiston. The concept of phlogiston was eliminated from the chemical lexicon. The reconceptualization of chemical phenomena that took place in the chemical revolution made possible the atomic theory of matter, which, as we know, posits quite different constituents of material substances from the principles central to the earlier conceptual structure. Just what constitutes conceptual change, how it relates to theory change, and how it relates to changes in belief continues to be a subject of much debate. Clearly, though, as the preceding example demonstrates, the three are significantly interrelated. (shrink)

This paper addresses bioethics in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. The Introduction (Section 1) highlights that at the field's inception, infectiousness was not front and center. Instead, infectious disease was widely perceived as having been conquered. This made it possible for bioethicists to center values such as individual autonomy, informed consent, and a statist conception of justice. Section 2 urges shifting to values more fitting for the moment the world is in. To find these, it directs (...) attention to the Global South, and in particular, Africa, and to the values of ubuntu, solidarity, dignity, kinship, and humility. The paper concludes (in Section 3) that 21st‐century challenges facing bioethics are increasingly global, and calls on bioethicists themselves to be more globally inclusive in their approaches. (shrink)

Debates about medical futility first emerged in the scholarly literature during the 1990s after empirical studies showed the widespread use of medical interventions offering no reasonable chance of...

Over the next 15 years, the government-funded human genome project will map and sequence each of the human cell’s estimated 100,000 genes. The project’s first fruits will be a vast quantity of information about genetic disease. This information will contribute to the design of quicker, cheaper and more accurate tests for identifying deleterious genes in individuals. Because genetic conditions are often regarded as “immutable, heritable taints that intrinsically implicate the bearer’s identity,” overly-deterministic interpretations of genetic information can readily distort genetic (...) risk and become enshrined in institutional policies of social isolation and discrimination. (shrink)

The principle of the anomalousness of the mental (PAM) is one of the most controversial principles in Donald Davidson’s argument for anomalous monism (AM). It states that there cannot be any laws (psychophysical or psychological) on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained. The argument against such psychological laws rests on the claim that psychology is not a comprehensive closed system (though physics is). Here I sketch the argument for AM, focusing on the role of PAM (...) and the concept of closure. I present characterizations of the notion of closure offered by William Stanton and Brian McLaughlin. McLaughlin argues that Stanton’s characterization makes the argument for AM circular. McLaughlin offers a different characterization, but I argue that given Davidson’s criterion of event identity and individuation, the two are equivalent and thus both are subject to McLaughlin’s objection. If I’m right about this, there are still a couple of options open to Davidson and the defenders of Anomalous Monism. However, I conclude by indicating why neither seems promising to me. (shrink)