a comprehensive, somewhat Gricean theory of speech acts, including an account of communicative intentions and inferences, a taxonomy of speech acts, and coverage of many topics in pragmatics -/- .

The field of economics proves to be a matter of metaphor and storytelling - its mathematics is metaphoric and its policy-making is narrative. Economists have begun to realize this and to rethink how they speak. This volume is the result of a conference held at Wellesley College, involving both theoretical and applied economists, that explored the consequences of the rhetoric and the conversation of the field of economics.

Saigle, Dubljevic, and Racine (2018) claim that Libet-style experiments are insufficient to challenge that agents have free will. They support this with evidence from experimen- tal psychology that the folk concept of freedom is consis- tent with monism, that our minds are identical to our brains. However, recent literature suggests that evidence from experimental psychology is less than determinate in this regard, and that folk intuitions are too unrefined as to provide guidance on metaphysical issues like monism. In light of (...) this, it is worthwhile to examine the authors’ insuf- ficiency claim under the assumption that monism is false and dualism true (our minds are not identical to our brains). We conclude that, were dualism true, then Libet- style experiments would tell us no more about freedom and moral responsibility than what the authors initially claimed, thus further bolstering their point that Libet-style experiments are ill-suited to speak to the free will of agents. In what follows we first discuss some of the reasons to be skeptical of using folk intuitions to make claims about the nature of freedom and moral responsibility. We then draw from the work of E. J. Lowe to demonstrate that Libet-style experiments would likely give the same results regardless of the truth of monism or dualism. (shrink)

Olszewski and Goldkind's (2018) article on pediatric decision making in the clinical care setting is articulate and well written. The authors understand the challenges in ensuring that pediatric pa...

What is the simulation theory? Arguments for simulation theory Simulation theory versus theory theory Simulation theory and cognitive science Versions of simulation theory A possible test of the simulation theory.

Book reviewed in this article: The New Health Care For Profit: Doctors and Hospitals in a Competitive Environment. Edited by Bradford H. Gray The Healing Mission and the Business Ethic. By Robert M. Cunningham The Medical Industrial Complex. By Stanley Wohl.

Background and aims: Recent investigations have highlighted the value of neuropsychological testing for the assessment and screening of Alcohol-Related Brain Damage. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the suitability of the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination and the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status for this purpose. Methods: Comparing 28 participants with ARBD and 30 alcohol-dependent participants without ARBD we calculated Area Under the Curve statistics, sensitivity and specificity values, base-rate adjusted predictive values, and likelihood ratios for (...) both tests. Results: High levels of screening accuracy were found for the total scores of both the ACE-III and RBANS at multiple cut-off points. Removing participants with a history of polysubstance from the samples improved the diagnostic capabilities of the RBANS substantially, while only minor improvements to the ACE-III’s accuracy were observed. Conclusions: Overall, both the ACE-III and RBANS are suitable tools for ARBD screening within an alcohol-dependent population, though the RBANS is the superior of the two. Clinicians using these tools for ARBD screening should be cautious of false-positive outcomes and should therefore combine them with other assessment methods and more detailed neuropsychological testing before reaching diagnostic decisions. (shrink)

Dynamic systems theory (DS) provides tools for exploring how simpler elements can interact to produce complex psychological configurations. It may, as Lewis demonstrates, provide means for explicating relationships between two reductionist approaches to overlapping sets of phenomena. The result is a description of psychological phenomena at a level that begins to achieve the richness we would hope to achieve in examining psychological life as it is experienced and explored in psychoanalysis.

The article of Finlay et al. is an excellent example of identifying constraints in the development of the brain, and their implications on brain architecture in evolution. Here we further illustrate the importance of constraints by presenting a few examples of how a small number of biophysical mechanisms or even a single life history parameter can have an enormous impact on brain evolution.

Cognitive neuroscience aims to map mental processes onto brain function, which begs the question of what “mental processes” exist and how they relate to the tasks that are used to manipulate and measure them. This topic has been addressed informally in prior work, but we propose that cumulative progress in cognitive neuroscience requires a more systematic approach to representing the mental entities that are being mapped to brain function and the tasks used to manipulate and measure mental processes. We describe (...) a new open collaborative project that aims to provide a knowledge base for cognitive neuroscience, called the Cognitive Atlas, and outline how this project has the potential to drive novel discoveries about both mind and brain. (shrink)

(1979). Some Observations on the Problems of Grading Examinations with Several Components: a reply to P. J. Squire. Educational Studies: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 225-230.

We are living in an unprecedented era of biomedical revolution. Medicine is remaking humans, and controversy surrounds such topics as abortion, artificial organs, brain circuitry, eugenics, euthanasia, and gene therapy. At the same time, medical advances are posing complex ethical problems for both patients and professionals. The most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of its kind, Case Studies in Biomedical Ethics: Decision-Making, Principles, and Cases explores fundamental ethical questions arising from real situations faced by health professionals, patients, and others. Featuring a (...) wide range of more than 100 case studies drawn from current events, court cases, and physicians' experiences, the book is divided into three parts. Part I presents a basic framework for ethical decision-making in healthcare, covering such issues as separating evaluative questions from questions of fact; distinguishing between ethical and nonethical evaluations; and identifying the source of ethical judgments. Expanding upon this framework, Part II explains the ethical principles: beneficence and nonmaleficence, justice, respect for autonomy, veracity, fidelity, and avoidance of killing. Parts I and II provide students with the background to analyze the ethical dilemmas presented in Part III, which features cases on a broad spectrum of issues including abortion, genetics, mental health, confidentiality, health insurance, experimentation on humans, the right to refuse treatment, and death and dying. Each case is accompanied by the authors' commentary, which guides students in considering the issues. Ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in biomedical ethics, bioethics, and medical ethics, Case Studies in Biomedical Ethics incorporates opening text boxes in each chapter that cross-reference relevant cases in other chapters. It also includes an appendix of important ethical codes and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)

It is not too great an exaggeration to claim that On the Origin of Species was, along with Das Kapital, one of the two most significant works in the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. As George Henry Lewes wrote in 1868, ‘No work of our time has been so general in its influence’. However, the very generality of the influence of Darwin’s work provides the chief problem for the intellectual historian. Most books and articles on the subject assert the (...) influence but remain very imprecise about its nature. It is very difficult indeed to assess what it was about the Darwinian theory which was so influential and how its influence was felt. This problem in Victorian intellectual history intersects with a related one in the history of science. There has been a tendency on the part of historians of science to isolate Darwin in two related ways. The first is to single him out from the mainstream of nineteenth-century naturalism in Britain and allow ‘Darwinism’ to stand duty for the wider movement of which it was in fact but a part. The second is the tendency to single out his evolutionary theory and to demarcate it sharply from those of his predecessors and contemporaries. According to this interpretation Darwin stood alone as a real, empirical scientist and provided the first genuinely scientific hypothesis for the process by which evolution might have occurred. The theories of the other main evolutionists—Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Chambers, Spencer, and Wallace—were more or less besmirched by ideological, anthropomorphic, or other ‘non-scientific’ factors or by the uses to which they were put by their authors. Charles Darwin is thus made to stand out as a figure of comparatively unalloyed scientific status and is treated in relative isolation from the social and intellectual context in which he worked and into which his theory was received. (shrink)

In celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Beauchamp and Childress’s Principles of Biomedical Ethics, a review is undertaken to compare the lists of principles in various bioethical theories to determine the extent to which the various lists can be reconciled. Included are the single principle theories of utilitarianism, libertarianism, Hippocratism, and the theories of Pellegrino, Engelhardt, The Belmont Report, Beauchamp and Childress, Ross, Veatch, and Gert. We find theories all offering lists of principles numbering from one to (...) ten. Many of the differences can be reconciled, but some critical differences remain. (shrink)

In its October 2001 issue, this journal published a series of articles questioning the Whole-Brain-based definition of death. Much of the concern focused on whether somatic integration - a commonly understood basis for the whole-brain death view - can survive the brain's death. The present article accepts that there are insurmountable problems with whole-brain death views, but challenges the assumption that loss of somatic integration is the proper basis for pronouncing death. It examines three major themes. First, it accepts the (...) claim of the "disaggregators" that some behaviors traditionally associated with death can be unbundled, but argues that other behaviors (including organ procurement) must continue to be associated. Second, it rejects the claims of the "somaticists," that the integration of the body is critical, arguing instead for equating death with the irreversible loss of "embodied consciousness," that is, the loss of integration of bodily and mental function. Third, it defends higher-brain views against the charge that they are necessarily "mentalist," that is, that they equate death with losing some mental function such as consciousness or personhood. It argues, instead, for the integration of bodily and mental function as the critical feature of human life and that its irreversible loss constitutes death. (shrink)

The emergence of the “4th Industrial Revolution,” i.e. the convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, advanced materials, and bioengineering technologies, could accelerate socioeconomic insecurities and anxieties or provide beneficial alternatives to the status quo. In the post-Covid-19 era, the entities that are best positioned to capitalize on these innovations are large firms, which use digital platforms and big data to orchestrate vast ecosystems of users and extract market share across industry sectors. Nonetheless, these technologies also have the potential (...) to democratize ownership, broaden political-economic participation, and reduce environmental harms. We articulate the potential sociotechnical pathways in this high-stakes crossroads by analyzing cellular agriculture, an exemplary 4th Industrial Revolution technology that synergizes computer science, biopharma, tissue engineering, and food science to grow cultured meat, dairy, and egg products from cultured cells and/or genetically modified yeast. Our exploration of this space involved multi-sited ethnographic research in both the cellular agriculture community and alternative economic organizations devoted to open source licensing, member-owned cooperatives, social financing, and platform business models. Upon discussing how these latter approaches could potentially facilitate alternative sociotechnical pathways in cellular agriculture, we reflect upon the broader implications of this work with respect to the 4th Industrial Revolution and the enduring need for public policy reform. (shrink)

Our primary focus is on analysis of the concept of voluntariness, with a secondary focus on the implications of our analysis for the concept and the requirements of voluntary informed consent. We propose that two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions must be satisfied for an action to be voluntary: intentionality, and substantial freedom from controlling influences. We reject authenticity as a necessary condition of voluntary action, and we note that constraining situations may or may not undermine voluntariness, depending on the (...) circumstances and the psychological capacities of agents. We compare and evaluate several accounts of voluntariness and argue that our view, unlike other treatments in bioethics, is not a value-laden theory. We also discuss the empirical assessment of individuals? perceptions of the degrees of noncontrol and self-control. We propose use of a particular Decision Making Control Instrument. Empirical research using this instrument can provide data that will help establish appropriate policies and procedures for obtaining voluntary consent to research. (shrink)

The dead donor rule (DDR) governs procuring life-prolonging organs. They should be taken only from deceased donors. Miller and Truog have proposed abandoning the rule when patients have decided to forgo life-sustaining treatment and have consented to procurement. Organs could then be procured from living patients, thus killing them by organ procurement. This proposal warrants careful examination. They convincingly argue that current brain or circulatory death pronouncement misidentifies the biologically dead. After arguing convincingly that physicians already cause death by withdrawing (...) treatment, they claim no bright-line differences preclude organ removal from the living. The argument fails for those who accept the double effect doctrine or other grounds for distinguishing forgoing life support from active, intentional killing. If the goal is determining irreversible loss of somatic function, they correctly label current death pronouncement a “legal fiction.” Recognizing a second, public policy meaning of the term death provides grounds for maintaining the DDR without jeopardizing procurement. (shrink)

_Minds, Brains, Computers_ serves as both an historical and interdisciplinary introduction to the foundations of cognitive science.

What makes a property intrinsic? What exactly does the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction rest upon, and how can we reasonably justify this distinction? These questions bear great importance on central debates in such diverse philosophical fields as ethics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science - to only name a few. Given the central relevance of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction to philosophical research, a collection of pertinent essays on the topic is an essential addition to the literature. It helps to identify more (...) clearly the problems and arguments that are at stake. The anthology provides a comprehensive overview of central facets of the debates, including both crucial earlier and important new contributions by leading philosophers. As such it constitutes an indispensable component of any serious study of the topic. (shrink)

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)

: Research by Siminoff and colleagues reveals that many lay people in Ohio classify legally living persons in irreversible coma or persistent vegetative state (PVS) as dead and that additional respondents, although classifying such patients as living, would be willing to procure organs from them. This paper analyzes possible implications of these findings for public policy. A majority would procure organs from those in irreversible coma or in PVS. Two strategies for legitimizing such procurement are suggested. One strategy would be (...) to make exceptions to the dead donor rule permitting procurement from those in PVS or at least those who are in irreversible coma while continuing to classify them as living. Another strategy would be to further amend the definition of death to classify one or both groups as deceased, thus permitting procurement without violation of the dead donor rule. Permitting exceptions to the dead donor rule would require substantial changes in law—such as authorizing procuring surgeons to end the lives of patients by means of organ procurement—and would weaken societal prohibitions on killing. The paper suggests that it would be easier and less controversial to further amend the definition of death to classify those in irreversible coma and PVS as dead. Incorporation of a conscience clause to permit those whose religious or philosophical convictions support whole-brain or cardiac-based death pronouncement would avoid violating their beliefs while causing no more than minimal social problems. The paper questions whether those who would support an exception to the dead donor rule in these cases and those would support a further amendment to the definition of death could reach agreement to adopt a public policy permitting organ procurement of those in irreversible coma or PVS when proper consent is obtained. (shrink)

No one really believes that literally all functions of the entire brain must be lost for an individual to be dead. A better definition of death involves a higher brain orientation.

The concept of care and a related ethical theory of care have emerged as increasingly important in biomedical ethics. This essay outlines a series of questions about the conceptualization of care and its place in ethical theory. First, it considers the possibility that care should be conceptualized as an alternative principle of right action; then as a virtue, a cluster of virtues, or as a synonym for virtue theory. The implications for various interpretations of the debate of the relation of (...) care and justice are then explored, suggesting three possible meanings for that contrast. Next, the possibility that care theorists are taking up the debate over the relation between principles and cases is considered. Finally, it is suggested that care theorists may be pressing for consideration of an entirely new question in moral theory: the assessment of the normative appropriateness of relationships. Issues needing to be addressed in an ethic of relationships are suggested. (shrink)

Goofy is one of the most beloved and enduring members of the Disney family. In the course of A Goofy Movie, Goofy passes on to his son, Max, a fishing pole that is “been handed down from Goof to Goof to Goof.” Obviously, this pole is one of Goofy's prized possessions and he takes great pride in gifting it to Max. Unfortunately, in doing so, he violates Kant's categorical imperative, since the handing on of this pole is not something that (...) Goofy could mandate be done by everyone. He would not want Pete handing this rod to his son, PJ, since it is a Goof family heirloom. In considering why ordinary men and women start to wonder about ethical living, the authors used Goofy's example of humble but accident‐prone dedication to examine what constitutes success in moral decision‐making. (shrink)