Mindreading (or folk psychology, Theory of Mind, mentalizing) is the capacity to represent and reason about others’ mental states. The Simulation Theory (ST) is one of the main approaches to mindreading. ST draws on the common-sense idea that we represent and reason about others’ mental states by putting ourselves in their shoes. More precisely, we typically arrive at representing others’ mental states by simulating their mental states in our own mind. This entry offers a detailed analysis of ST, considers theoretical (...) arguments and empirical data in favour of and against it, discusses its philosophical implications, and illustrates some alternatives to it. (shrink)

ABSTRACTProblem posing is the act of creating one’s own problems, unlike the traditional practice of solving problems posed by others. Problem posing is not a commonly taught topic. Though...

Background: Informed consent is essential for the ethical conduct of clinical research and is a culturally sensitive issue. But, a measurable Chinese version of the scale to evaluate the informed consent process has not yet been explored in the existing literature. Research objectives: This study aimed to develop and psychometrically test the Chinese version of the Informed Consent Process Scale. Research design: Back-translation was conducted to develop the Chinese version of the questionnaire. A cross-sectional survey was administered, after which an (...) exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Participants: We recruited a total of 375 participants who had experience in signing an informed consent form within the previous 3 years in Taiwan. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by two Institutional Review Boards and the autonomy of the participants was respected. Findings: The Chinese version of the Informed Consent Process Scale is composed of three factors with 23 items showing evidence of acceptable reliability and validity. Three major factors were extracted and labeled: Factor 1 – ‘Understanding of the research’, Factor 2 – ‘Trust and confidence’ and Factor 3 – ‘Doubt and uncertainty’. The three factors accounted for is 52.954 of the total variance with Cronbach’s α of.917. Discussion and conclusion: The finding corroborates previous studies showing that participants had too little understanding on the informed consent forms they signed and implied the need to clarify the critical points in clinical research. The psychometric results indicated good internal consistency and validity for this newly constructed instrument, and it was found worthy of conducting further testing and application. (shrink)

Intellectually stimulating articles, which grapple with the tough issues involving morality, justice, and the law. This balanced anthology will be of interest to philosophers, legal scholars, and anyone concerned about the relation of law to morality.

For almost 30 years the ion channel that initiates the ON visual pathway in vertebrate vision has remained elusive. Recent findings now indicate that the pathway, which begins with unbinding of glutamate from the metabotropic glutamate receptor 6 (mGluR6), ends with the opening of the transient receptor potential (TRP)M1 cation channel. As a component of the mGluR6 signal transduction pathway, mutations in TRPM1 would be expected to cause congenital stationary night blindness (CSNB), and several such mutations have already been identified (...) in CSNB families. Furthermore, expression of TRPM1 in both the retina and skin raises the possibility that a genetic link exists between certain types of visual and skin disorders. (shrink)

Grice proposed to investigate 'the total signification of the utterance'. One persistent criticism of Grice's taxonomy of signification is that he missed an important category of information. This content, and/or the process of providing it, goes by a variety of labels: 'generalized implicature', 'explicature', 'unarticulated constituents', 'default heuristics', 'impliciture'. In this study we first take a sample of such phenomena and, from the point of view of pure pragmatics, survey the central descriptions of the content expressed and the mechanisms that (...) might deliver these contents. We then, from the point of view of experimental pragmatics, focus on two accounts: Levinson's I-heuristic, and Bach's standardization. We find experimental evidence for the existence of such implicitures, and for the use of language specific standardizations over language neutral background information. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For more than sixty years, surgeons have used bioethical strategies to promote patient self‐determination, many of these now collectively described as “informed consent.” Yet the core framework—understanding, risks, benefits, and alternatives—fails to support patients in deliberation about treatment. We find that surgeons translate this framework into an overly complicated technical explanation of disease and treatment and an overly simplified narrative that surgery will “fix” the problem. They omit critical information about the goals and downsides of surgery and present untenable options (...) as a matter of patient choice. We propose a novel framework called “better conversations.” Herein, surgeons provide context about clinical norms, establish the goals of surgery, and comprehensively delineate the downsides of surgery to generate a deliberative space for patients to consider whether surgery is right for them. This paradigm shift meets the standards for informed consent, supports deliberation, and allows patients to anticipate and prepare for the experience of treatment. (shrink)

In the United States, people may donate organs and tissues to a family member, friend, or anyone whose specific need becomes known to them. For example, in late 2003 dozens of people came forward to donate a kidney to a professional basketball player known to them only through his sports performances. People may also donate a kidney to no one in particular through a process known as nondirected donation. In nondirected donation, people donate a kidney to the organ allocation system (...) rather than to anyone known to them personally. There are limits, though, to generosity. People are usually not allowed to donate to groups of people, no matter the contours of the group, whether white, black, Catholic or Presbyterian, third-time liver recipient, and so on. As the agency that oversees national transplantation policy, the United Network for Organs Sharing does not allow this sort of restricted donation, though it appears that some regional Organ Procurement Organizations occasionally bend the rules when donors insist that their organs go to children or to first-time recipients. Those ad hoc arrangements are, however, the exception to the rule. (shrink)

MORALITY, JUSTICE AND THE LAW is a co-edited volume pulling together selections on theories of the moral underpinnings of law, morality and lawyering (including the religious lawyering movement), civil disobedience, capital punishment and immigration. The book was published by Prometheus Books in 2007.

Jan Narveson has articulated a deeply held, widely shared intuition regarding what moral law has to say about bringing additional people into existence: while we are “in favour of making people happy,” we are “neutral about making happy people.” Various formulations of the Narvesonian intuition (closely related to the person-affecting intuition or restriction) have been widely criticized. This present paper outlines an off-the-beaten-path alternate construction of the intuition—the existence condition—and argues that that particular construction has the resources to avoid some (...) of those criticisms. But still other considerably more widely recognized alternate constructions have been offered as well. Thus John Broome outlines what he calls the neutrality intuition. While Broome finds the underlying intuition “strongly attractive,” he nonetheless argues that the neutrality intuition itself leads us quickly into inconsistency. Wlodek Rabinowicz disagrees. On his view, Broome’s inconsistency argument shows, not that the neutrality intuition is false, but rather that it doesn’t follow, from the fact that the outcome, or possible future or world, that includes the additional person is neither better nor worse than the (otherwise similar) world that excludes that person, that the one world is exactly as good as the other. The better view, according to Rabinowicz, is that, on occasion, and specifically when the coming into existence of additional people is at stake, the one world is incommensurate with the other. What is called the principle of trichotomy is, in other words, false. Difficulties arise, however, when we try to reject that seemingly compelling conceptual principle. This present paper concludes with the argument that the availability of the existence condition—which, together with certain other uncontroversial moral principles and a handful of conceptual principles, forms the existential approach—shows that we can maintain the most intuitive parts of neutrality intuition while avoiding both Broome’s inconsistency worry and Rabinowicz’s commitment to incommensurability. Incommensurability may be correct on other grounds—but not, this present paper argues, on the grounds provided by Broome’s inconsistency argument. (shrink)

When we look up a word in a dictionary, we want to know not just its meaning but also its function and the circumstances under which it should be used in preference to words of similar meaning. Standard dictionaries do not address such matters, treating each word in isolation. R. M. W. Dixon puts forward a new approach to lexicography that involves grouping words into 'semantic sets', to describe what can and cannot be said, and providing explanations for this. He (...) provides a critical survey of the evolution of English lexicography from the earliest times, showing how Samuel Johnson's classic treatment has been amended in only minor ways. Written in an easy and accessible style, the book focuses on the rampant plagiarism between lexicographers, on ways of comparing meanings of words, and on the need to link lexicon with grammar. Dixon tells an engrossing story that puts forward a vision for the future. (shrink)

To the Editor: Before using brain criteria, pronouncing death in humans was based on irreversible loss of something vaguely thought of as respiration or circulation or cardiac function. We have always known the loss had to be irreversible. We have also long known that "irreversible" was ambiguous. In his article ("Are DCD Donors Dead?" May-June 2010), Don Marquis captures this ambiguity when he contrasts irreversibility and permanence. Defenders of cardiocirculatory criteria have known that, in some cases, these functions physiologically could (...) be reversed, but won't be because advance directives or surrogate refusal would make intervention illegal and immoral. When intervening is illegal and immoral, we claim the .. (shrink)

A model of what an edition of a philosohic text for an introductory level should be. Introduction does an admirable job of putting Berkeley's thought in the intellectual context of its time. --Gary C. Hatfield.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is Bioethics Applied Ethics?Robert M. VeatchBioethics is often referred to as a kind of applied ethics. The term applied ethics can be controversial if it is taken to imply that ethical theory from philosophy or religious ethics has to be the starting point for ethical analysis of some practical field such as medicine or law or politics. The term can be understood as requiring some premises from an (...) ethical theory that are then "applied" to some problem area, as a "top down" way of doing the work of moral reflection in a way that axioms in geometry are applied to present proofs of mathematical claim.The publication of an important work in the history of medical ethics, A History of Medical Ethics, provides an opportunity to reflect more carefully on what applied ethics means. That massive multi-authored volume edited by Robert Baker and Laurence McCullough (2007) is scheduled for publication this fall. With the permission of the Press, we have asked Baker and McCullough to prepare an article-length version of one of the central essays in that work. Their paper challenges the idea that ethical theory should be "applied" to medicine or other fields, putting forth an alternative of the "appropriation" of an ethical theory by the formulation of concepts, principles, moral rules, or other specifications that may turn out to be unique or at least modified for the particular field in question.In this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, we publish the Baker-McCullough article together with five critical commentaries. We include two medical historians who have a sustained commitment to studying the history of ethics in medicine, two systematic ethicists who have an unusual level of commitment to studying ethics historically, and a physician with unusual sensitivity to the history of medical ethics. Each comments on the Baker-McCullough thesis and offers an alternative view of the link between ethical theory and the field of biomedical ethics.Daniel Fox triggered some of the initial reflection on the history of medical ethics in the 1970s. His work is discussed by Baker and McCullough. Fox is sympathetic with the Baker-McCullough appropriation thesis, viewing their position as complementary to his own, although he [End Page 1] urges more attention to the political aspects of medicine, professional dominance, and professional control of medical resources.Ulf Schmidt, a specialist on the historical aspects of research during the Nazi era, focuses on Baker and McCullough's use of that historical example of the appropriation of medical ethics.The two ethicists who comment both have had many years experience with historical aspects of medical ethics, and both worked on the historically important Belmont Report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects. Both question whether Baker and McCullough overstate the problem of the relation between application and appropriation. Albert Jonsen, as a member of the National Commission, concentrates on the Belmont Report, showing how he sees the report appropriating philosophical ethics.Tom Beauchamp, who was the primary staff person responsible for the report, provides a somewhat different read on the report and particularly on the role of Kantian ethics in the report's discussion of autonomy. Beauchamp accuses Baker and McCullough of having too narrow an understanding of the meaning of the term "applied," claiming that no people doing medical ethics today would simply apply ethical theory in a deductivist manner.Finally, Jeremy Sugarman, the physician ethicist, is, in a somewhat surprising turn, the cautious defender of the application that Baker and McCullough challenge. Although he ends up sympathetic with the appropriation that implies going beyond straight-forward top-down application, he outlines the value of ethical theory for the practical analysis of ethical problems in fields such as medicine.ReferenceBaker, Robert, and McCullough, Laurence, eds. 2007. A History of Medical Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press, in press. [End Page 2]Google ScholarCopyright © 2007 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

: In spite of recent political setbacks for the movement toward universal health insurance, considerable support remains for the idea. Among those supporting such plans, most assume that a universal insurance system, especially if it is a single-payer system, would offer a single list of basic covered services. This paper challenges that assumption and argues for the availability of multiple lists of services in a universal insurance system. The claim is made that multiple lists will be both more efficient and (...) more fair. Any single list will fund some services that are quite attractive to some people, but only marginally attractive to others. Thus any single-list plan will fund some services that produce only marginal benefit for the resources used. Moreover, since some people will hold values quite compatible with the single list and others will hold values leading to preferences for unfunded services, some people will get much more benefit from any single list than other people will. Fairness and efficiency require providing an entitlement to universal access to health insurance that could be purchased by typical consumers for a fixed price of perhaps $3500. By permitting everyone to pick their preferred list of services available at that price, each person will efficiently use his or her entitlement while getting more equal opportunity for benefits. (shrink)

This essay describes possible futures that may result from accelerating technological advances and the challenges these futures present to psychotherapists. In the next 100 years, human beings will be likely to increasingly use computers and artificial intelligence and become extremely dependent on this relationship. Chip and stem cell implants may provide people with greater memory capacity, computational capacity, and skill sets. Genetic engineering, cryonics, and cloning may allow dramatic increases in the human life span these developments occur, they will challenge (...) what it means to be a human being and have a soul. Although psychotherapists will acquire new tools for assessment and intervention, they will face the daunting task of addressing these changes and challenges to personhood with their clients. (shrink)

An ethnographic approach to the South Indian festival Ayudha Puja reveals that the celebration plays a role in the construction of scientific communities. Ayudha Puja has the ability to absorb westerners, non-Hindus, and non-Brahmins into Indian science and engineering communities and is thus widely practiced in South Indian industry and academia. The practice of Ayudha Puja thus parallels what M. N. Srinivas labels “Sanskritization.” Within India, the process of Sanskritization refers to the adoption of high-caste habits and diet by upwardly (...) mobile lower-caste communities. While not actually an example of Sanskritization, participation in Ayudha Puja is analogous to that process: by joining a Hindu rite within the scientific and professional workspace, outsiders become part of local laboratory, department, or office culture. Such practices reveal the need for scholars to investigate scientific community building outside the domain of how scientists reveal new facts about the world. (shrink)