International research guidance has shifted towards an increasingly proactive inclusion of children and adolescents in health research in recognition of the need for more evidence-based treatment. Strong calls have been made for the active involvement of children and adolescents in developing research proposals and policies, including in decision-making about research participation. Much evidence and debate on this topic has focused on high-income settings, while the greatest health burdens and research gaps occur in low-middle income countries, highlighting the need to take (...) account of voices from more diverse contexts. Between January and March 2014, 56 community representatives and secondary school students were involved in eight group discussions to explore views on the acceptability of involving children and adolescents in research, and how these groups should be involved in decision-making about their own participation. Discussions were voice-recorded and transcriptions analyzed using Framework Analysis, combining deductive and inductive approaches. Across these discussions, the idea of involving children and adolescents in decision-making about research participation was strongly supported given similar levels of responsibility carried in everyday life; existing capacity that should be recognized; the opportunity for learning involved; varying levels of parental control; and generational shifts towards greater understanding of science for adolescents than their parents. Joint decision-making processes were supported for older children and adolescents, with parental control influenced by perceptions of the risks involved in participation. Moves towards more active involvement of children and adolescents in planning studies and in making decisions about their participation are supported by these findings from Kenya. Important emerging considerations include the need to take account of the nature of proposed studies and prevailing attitudes and understanding of research in identifying children’s and adolescents’ roles. More research is needed to expand diversity and develop approaches to joint assent and consent processes that would fairly represent children’s and adolescents’ wishes and interests, towards their long term benefit. (shrink)

Hunting Causes and Using Them argues that causation is not one thing, as commonly assumed, but many. There is a huge variety of causal relations, each with different characterizing features, different methods for discovery and different uses to which it can be put. In this collection of new and previously published essays, Nancy Cartwright provides a critical survey of philosophical and economic literature on causality, with a special focus on the currently fashionable Bayes-nets and invariance methods - and it (...) exposes a huge gap in that literature. Almost every account treats either exclusively how to hunt causes or how to use them. But where is the bridge between? It's no good knowing how to warrant a causal claim if we don't know what we can do with that claim once we have it. This book will interest philosophers, economists and social scientists. (shrink)

Philosophy for Children arose in the 1970s in the US as an educational programme. This programme, initiated by Matthew Lipman, was devoted to exploring the relationship between the notions ‘philosophy’ and ‘childhood’, with the implicit practical goal of establishing philosophy as a full-fledged ‘content area’ in public schools. Over 40 years, the programme has spread worldwide, and the theory and practice of doing philosophy for or with children and young people appears to be of growing interest in the field of (...) education and, by implication, in society as a whole. This article focuses on this growing interest by offering a survey of the main arguments and ideas that have given shape to the idea of philosophy for children in recent decades. This aim is twofold: first, to make more familiar an actual educational practice that is not at all well known in the field of academic philosophy itself; and second, to invite a re-thinking of the relationship between philosophy and the child ‘after Lipman’. (shrink)

The claims of randomized controlled trials to be the gold standard rest on the fact that the ideal RCT is a deductive method: if the assumptions of the test are met, a positive result implies the appropriate causal conclusion. This is a feature that RCTs share with a variety of other methods, which thus have equal claim to being a gold standard. This article describes some of these other deductive methods and also some useful non-deductive methods, including the hypothetico-deductive method. (...) It argues that with all deductive methods, the benefit that the conclusions follow deductively in the ideal case comes with a great cost: narrowness of scope. This is an instance of the familiar trade-off between internal and external validity. RCTs have high internal validity but the formal methodology puts severe constraints on the assumptions a target population must meet to justify exporting a conclusion from the test population to the target. The article reviews one such set of assumptions to show the kind of knowledge required. The overall conclusion is that to draw causal inferences about a target population, which method is best depends case-by-case on what background knowledge we have or can come to obtain. There is no gold standard. (shrink)

" Nancy Bauer begins her book by asking: "Then what kind of a problem does being a woman pose?

What kinds of evidence reliably support predictions of effectiveness for health and social care interventions? There is increasing reliance, not only for health care policy and practice but also for more general social and economic policy deliberation, on evidence that comes from studies whose basic logic is that of JS Mill's method of difference. These include randomized controlled trials, case–control studies, cohort studies, and some uses of causal Bayes nets and counterfactual-licensing models like ones commonly developed in econometrics. The topic (...) of this paper is the 'external validity' of causal conclusions from these kinds of studies. We shall argue two claims. Claim, negative: external validity is the wrong idea; claim, positive: 'capacities' are almost always the right idea, if there is a right idea to be had. If we are right about these claims, it makes big problems for policy decisions. Many advice guides for grading policy predictions give top grades to a proposed policy if it has two good Mill's-method-of difference studies that support it. But if capacities are to serve as the conduit for support from a method-of-difference study to an effectiveness prediction, much more evidence, and much different in kind, is required. We will illustrate the complexities involved with the case of multisystemic therapy, an internationally adopted intervention to try to diminish antisocial behaviour in young people. (shrink)

Should you wash your hands? -- Are workarounds ethical? -- Turfing, bending, and gaming -- Dirty hands and the semiclear conscience -- Problems of humanity -- Ethics without heroics : foreseeing moral problems in complex systems.

Significantly, Berkeley, in his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, leveled a sustained attack on just this geometrical theory of distance perception. At first glance it may seem, as it did to Berkeley, that Descartes’ geometrical theory is produced by a simple error: namely, by the idea that a physiological optics provides an adequate description of the psychological processes of judging distances. In truth, this is the weakest of Berkeley’s objections to Descartes’ theory. Obviously we do not see the (...) angles and lines of convergence when we focus on a distant object, nor are we aware of having used any geometrical rules in judging distance. And Descartes never claimed this. (shrink)

This article agrees with Philip Kitcher that we should aim for a well-ordered science, one that answers the right questions in the right ways. Crucial to this is to address questions of use: Which scientific account is right for which system in which circumstances? This is a difficult question: evidence that may support a scientific claim in one context may not support it in another. Drawing on examples in physics and other sciences, this article argues that work on the warrant (...) of theories in philosophy of science needs to change. Emphasis should move from the warrant of theories in the abstract to questions of evidence for use. (shrink)

Since the World Health Organization first declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic, diverse strategies have emerged to address it. This paper focuses on two leading strategies, elimination and mitigation, and examines their ethical basis. Elimination or ‘Zero-COVID’ dominates policies in Pacific Rim societies. It sets as a goal zero deaths and seeks to contain transmission using stringent short-term lockdowns, followed by strict find, test, trace and isolate methods. Mitigation, which dominates in the US and most European nations, sets targets for (...) community transmission and lifts restrictions once targets are met. This approach takes calculated risks and regards a certain amount of disease and death as ethically justified. Section I examines different societal responses to risk that underlie these different policy approaches. Section II focuses on ethical arguments favouring Zero-COVID and raises health equity objections. Section III proposes a long-term strategy that balances the twin goals of promoting population health and health equity. There are no data available for this work. (shrink)

In this book, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy examines the nature of catastrophes in the era of globalization and technology. Can a catastrophe be an isolated occurrence? Is there such a thing as a “natural” catastrophe when all of our technologies—nuclear energy, power supply, water supply—are necessarily implicated, drawing together the biological, social, economic, and political? Nancy examines these questions and more. Exclusive to this English edition are two interviews with Nancy conducted by Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Yuji Nishiyama (...) and Yotetsu Tonaki. (shrink)

Causation is in trouble—at least as it is pictured in current theories in philosophy and in economics as well, where causation is also once again in fashion. In both disciplines the accounts of causality on offer are either modelled too closely on one or another favoured method for hunting causes or on assumptions about the uses to which causal knowledge can be put—generally for predicting the results of our efforts to change the world. The first kind of account supplies no (...) reason to think that causal knowledge, as it is pictured, is of any use; the second supplies no reason to think our best methods will be reliable for establishing causal knowledge. So, if these accounts are all there is to be had, how do we get from method to use? Of what use is knowledge of causal laws that we work so hard to obtain? (shrink)

BackgroundCommunity engagement in research is valuable for instrumental and intrinsic reasons. Despite existing guidance on how to ensure meaningful CE, much of what it takes to achieve this goal differs across settings. Considering the emerging trend towards mandating CE in many research studies, this study aimed at documenting how CE is conceptualized and implemented, and then providing context-specific guidance on how researchers and research regulators in Uganda could think about and manage CE in research.MethodsWe conducted qualitative interviews and focus group (...) discussions involving forty-one respondents who were experienced in HIV/aids biomedical research involving CE. Thirty-eight of these were directly or indirectly associated with Uganda’s leading research institution in the field of HIV/aids. They included Principal Investigators, Community Liaisons Officers, Research Ethics Committee members and Community Advisory Board Members. Three respondents were from Uganda National Council for Science and Technology. Data were collected between August 2019 and August 2020, using audio-taped focus group discussions and key informant interviews, transcribed and analyzed manually to generate themes and subthemes.ResultsThree major themes emerged: goals or value of CE; the means of CE, and, the evaluation of CE. Goals or value of CE generated four subthemes representing the overarching goals of CE: Promote communities’ agency; Generate and sustain trust; Protect and promote communities’ rights and interests; and, Help studies optimize participation in the form of enrolment and retention of participants. What usually comes under the nomenclatures of methods, strategies, and approaches of CE, such as town-hall meetings, sports events, drama, and the like, should simply be understood as the means of CE, and it is not desirable to hold pre-conceived and fixed ideas about the best means to conduct CE in research since a lot depend on the context. Finally, the study found that despite CE’s critical importance, which suggests the need to track and evaluate it, CE is currently intermittently evaluated, and for inadequate motivations.ConclusionsExisting guidance on how to conduct robust CE in research is no substitute for creativity, flexibility, and reflexivity on the part of both researchers and research regulators. (shrink)

An advertising firm''s ethical culture (as defined by the firm''s managerial and peer ethical behaviors) may affect the employees'' comfort levels and ethical behaviors. In this research, scenarios were used to describe advertising firms with various ethical cultures. Respondents'' perceived comfort levels in working for the firms described in the scenarios and the respondents'' behavioral intentions when faced with various advertising situations were assessed. Results of the study indicate that peer ethical behavior exerts a strong influence on the comfort or (...) discomfort level and the ethical behavioral intentions of potential advertising employees. Further, the strong influence exerted by peers seems to transcend the ethical behavior of the manager and carry over to the attitude toward the entire corporate advertising environment. This study provides insights for firms and researchers interested in assessing the impact of an advertising firm''s ethical culture on potential employees. (shrink)

People who lack decision‐making capacity may be able to communicate preferences, which can and should inform surrogate decision‐making on their behalf. It is unclear whether making a further distinction about “capacity for preferences,” as Jason Wasserman and Mark Navin propose in this issue of the Hastings Center Report, would improve the process of surrogate decision‐making. Anyone who is regularly involved in surrogate decision‐making or who has worked to articulate decision‐making standards and processes can think of cases in which a patient's (...) voice was ignored or his or her preferences and ability to communicate them overlooked. However, we can also think of cases in which it was unclear whether information provided by a patient, recently or in the past, should have been characterized as a preference relevant to a medical decision that the patient lacked the capacity to make. We should also recognize that clear preferences of a patient who lacks decision‐making capacity may conflict with the limits of another person or of a family's resources such that these preferences cannot guide a surrogate's decision. This patient will not get what he wants. A situation in which preferences are known and make sense but cannot be applied in a feasible way demonstrates the limits of the medical decision‐making framework concerning care that is not covered by medical insurance. (shrink)

Genetic testing raises concerns that individuals will be denied health insurance (and thus, effectively, access to health care), or that employers will screen to eliminate potentially costly workers. Although we as a society do not yet concur on the degree to which private businesses have a responsibility to promote social justice, several different policy alternatives might allow us to weigh the interests of insurers, as businesses, against the interests of citizens in a responsible manner.

Character structures underlie everyone’s personality. When rigidly defended, they limit us; yet as they become more flexible, they can reveal sources of animation, renewal and authenticity. _The Matrix and Meaning of Character_ guides the reader into an awareness of the archetypal depths that underlie character structures, presenting an original developmental model in which current analytic theories are synthesised. The authors examine nine character structures, animating them with fairy tales, mythic images and case material, creating a bridge between the traditional language (...) of psychopathology and the universal realm of image and symbol. This book will appeal to all analytical psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists who want to strengthen their clinical expertise. It will help clinicians to extend their clinical insights beyond a strictly behavioural, medical or cognitive approach, revealing the potential of the human spirit. (shrink)

What is commonly called Reichenbach’s “Principle of the Common Cause” is not a general criterion for a common cause, as many philosophers nowadays suppose. Examples include W. Salmon in his accounts of causal processes and Bas van Fraassen in his new book on quantum mechanics, in which he argues that the quantum world has no causal structure. This does not matter for Reichenbach’s purposes. Indeed it should not be surprising from his point of view that in different situations we need (...) different criteria or different methods for testing for the same phenomenon. The third thesis begins from a question: Where do probabilistic criteria for causality come from? (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)

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.

Human behavior is frequently described both in abstract, general terms and in concrete, specific terms. We asked whether these two ways of framing equivalent behaviors shift the inferences people make about the biological and psychological bases of those behaviors. In five experiments, we manipulated whether behaviors are presented concretely (i.e. with reference to a specific person, instantiated in the particular context of that person’s life) or abstractly (i.e. with reference to a category of people or behaviors across generalized contexts). People (...) judged concretely framed behaviors to be less biologically based and, on some dimensions, more psychologically based than the same behaviors framed in the abstract. These findings held true for both mental disorders (Experiments 1 and 2) and everyday behaviors (Experiments 4 and 5) and yielded downstream consequences for the perceived efficacy of disorder treatments (Experiment 3). Implications for science educators, students of science, and members of the lay public are discussed. (shrink)

This paper is a personal account of the events associated with the author’s work at the University of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children on a drug, deferiprone, for the treatment of thalassaemia. Trials of the drug were sponsored by the Canadian Medical Research Council and a drug company which would have been able, had the trials been successful, to seek regulatory approval to market the drug. When evidence emerged that deferiprone might be inadequately effective in a substantial proportion of patients, (...) the drug company issued legal threats when the author proposed informing her patients and the scientific community. Until protests were made by international authorities in her field of research, the hospital and university did not adequately support the author’s academic freedom and responsibilities as a medical practitioner. It is argued that underlying cause of this, and of other similar cases, is the political philosophy which is driving the commercialisation of universities and bringing about the deregulation of drug approval procedures. Together these changes constitute a serious threat to the public good. (shrink)

Adoration is the second volume of the Deconstruction of Christianity, following Dis-Enclosure. The first volume attempted to demonstrate why it is necessary to open reason up not to a religious dimension but to one transcending reason as we have been accustomed to understanding it; the term "adoration" attempts to name the gesture of this dis-enclosed reason. -/- Adoration causes us to receive ignorance as truth: not a feigned ignorance, perhaps not even a "nonknowledge," nothing that would attempt to justify the (...) negative again, but the simple, naked truth that there is nothing in the place of God, because there is no place for God. The outside of the world opens us in the midst of the world, and there is no first or final place. Each one of us is at once the first and the last. Each one, each name. And our ignorance is made worse by the fact that we do not know whether we ought to name this common and singular property of all names. We must remain in this suspense, hesitating between and stammering in various possible languages, ultimately learning to speak anew. -/- In this book, Jean-Luc Nancy goes beyond his earlier historical and philosophical thought and tries to think-or at least crack open a little to thinking-a stance or bearing that might be suitable to the retreat of God that results from the self-deconstruction of Christianity. Adoration may be a manner, a style of spirit for our time, a time when the "spiritual" seems to have become so absent, so dry, so adulterated. -/- The book is a major contribution to the important strand of attempts to think a "post-secular" situation of religion. (shrink)

Charlemagne's monogram -- Introduction -- The problem of consciousness -- The earliest vision -- Truth, being, and mind -- The Kehre -- The essence of truth -- The later Heidegger -- Reading Heidegger after Heidegger -- Being not a soul but the unmediated discovery of being.

Book Reviewed in this article:The Return of the Political. By Chantal Mouffe.Specters of Marx. By Jacques Derrida.Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Edited and Introduced By Amy Gutmann.Liberal Nationalism. By Yael Tamir.What's the Matter with Liberalism? By Ronald Beiner.Thick and Thin: Moral Argument At Home and Abroad. By Michael Walzer.

This paper defends the need for evidential diversity and the mix of methods that that can in train require. The focus is on causal claims, especially ‘singular’ claims about the effects of causes in a specific setting—either what will happen or what has happened. I do so by offering a template that categorises kinds of evidence that can support these claims. The catalogue is generated by considering what needs to happen for a causal process to carry through from putative cause (...) at the start to the targeted effect at the end. The usual call for mixed methods focusses on a single overall claim and argues that we increase certainty by the use of different methods with compensating strengths and weaknesses. My proposals instead focus on the evidence that supports the great many subsidiary claims that must hold if the overall one is to be true. As is typical for singular causal claims, the mix of methods that will generally be required to collect the kinds of evidence I urge will usually have little claim to the kind of rigour that is now widely demanded in evidencing causal claims, especially those for policy/treatment effectiveness. So I begin with an exploration of what seems to be intended by ‘rigour’ in such discussions, since it is seldom made clear just what makes the favoured methods especially rigorous. I then argue that the emphasis on rigour can be counterproductive. Rigour is often the enemy of evidential diversity, and evidential diversity—lots of it—can make for big improvements in the reliability of singular causal predictions and post hoc evaluations. I illustrate with the paragon of rigour for causal claims, randomised controlled trials (RCTs), rehearsing at some length what they can and cannot do to make it easier to assess the importance of rigour in warranting singular causal claims. (shrink)

This edition of _Leviathan_ is intended to provide the reader with a modestly abridged text that is straightforward and accessible, while preserving Hobbes' main lines of argument and of thought. It is meant for those who wish to focus primarily on the philosophical aspects of the work, apart from its stylish but often daunting early modern prose. The editors have updated language, style, punctuation, and grammar throughout. Very long, complicated sentences have been broken into two or more sentences for enhanced (...) readability. In some instances, terms within a sentence are rearranged for enhanced clarity. Occasionally, an equivalent contemporary word is substituted for an archaic one. Ellipses indicate omissions of more than one sentence. Care has been taken to maintain the strength, nuance, and flavor of the work, especially of Hobbes' most difficult arguments. In addition, the volume offers a general Introduction and concise headnotes to each chapter. Annotation is geared to the student or novice reader. A glossary of key terms is also included, as well as an index. (shrink)

Furman and Tuminello raise a central question about people living with mental illness: What kind of life is possible for them? Can one live a flourishing life even when struggling with a mental disorder? The authors draw on research studies to argue that a technique called Applied Behavioral Analysis can improve the lives of children with autism. One study, from 1987, found that 47% of children exposed to ABA attained normal IQ levels, adaptive skills, and social skills, and other studies (...) replicated these results. This is a promising avenue for those living with autism.Furman and Tuminello focus on autism, but their claims, if true, might be extended to other disorders as well; as they note, people... (shrink)

I discuss pedagogical issues that concern incest survivors. As teachers, we need to understand the ways in which the legacy of incest variously affects survivors' educational experiences and to be aware that the interplay of trust, knowledge, and power may be particularly complex for survivors. I emphasize the responsibility teachers have to create classrooms that are inclusive of survivors, while raising concerns about the practice of personal disclosure and assumptions about trust and safety in the classroom.

The essays in this volume provide rich fodder for reflection on topics that are of urgent interest to all thinking people. Each one suggests new ways to contemplate our own role(s) in the production and promotion of evil.

Evidence abounds of a close relation between ingestive and affective processes in rats and in humans. Emotional distress alters food intake and body weight; conversely, alterations in eating and weight influence emotional health. Thorough experimental analysis of the ingestion-affect relation may clarify the mechanisms of anxiety and depression. A strategy is proposed for examination of environmental and dispositional determinants of ingestive processes, emotionality, and responses to stress.