During the past few years considerable debate has arisen within academic journals with respect to the use of smart drugs or cognitive enhancement pharmaceuticals. The following paper seeks to examine the foundations of this cognitive enhancement debate using the example of methylphenidate use among college students. The argument taken is that much of the enhancement debate rests upon inflated assumptions about the ability of such drugs to enhance and over-estimations of either the size of the current market for such drugs (...) or the rise in popularity as drugs for enhancing cognitive abilities. This article provides an overview of the empirical evidence that methylphenidate has the ability to significantly improve cognitive abilities in healthy individuals, and examines whether the presumed uptake of the drug is either as socially significant as implied or growing to the extent that it requires urgent regulatory attention. In addition, it reviews the evidence of side-effects for the use of methylphenidate which may be an influential factor in whether an individual decides to use such drugs. The primary conclusions are that neither drug efficacy, nor the benefit-to-risk balance, nor indicators of current or growing demand provide sufficient evidence that methylphenidate is a suitable example of a cognitive enhancer with mass appeal. In light of these empirically based conclusions, the article discusses why methylphenidate might have become seen as a smart drug or cognitive enhancer. (shrink)

In this article, we analyse content from two recent reports to examine how a public health framework to cognitive enhancement is emerging. We find that, in several areas, these reports provide population-level arguments both for and against the use of cognitive enhancers. In discussing these arguments, we look at how these reports are indicative of potentially innovative frameworks—epidemiological, risk/benefit and socio-historical—by which to explore the public health impact of cognitive enhancement. Finally, we argue that these reports are suggestive of both (...) tensions between the bioethical and public health approaches and are also indicative of how these two frameworks can, in part, be seen as complementary. (shrink)

В монографии рассматриваются интерпретативные стратегии деконструкции, их историко-философские истоки, а также их значение для постметафизического мышления. Для научных работников, студентов и аспирантов.

I offer two potential diagnoses of the behavioral norms governing post‐truth politics by comparing the view of language, communication, and truth‐telling put forward by David Lewis (extended by game theorists), and John Searle. My first goal is to specify the different ways in which Lewis, and game theorists more generally, in contrast to Searle (in the company of Paul Grice and Jurgen Habermas), go about explaining the normativity of truthfulness within a linguistic community. The main difference is that for Lewis (...) and game theorists, “truthful” signaling follows from an align- ment of interests, and deception follows from mixed motives leading to the calculation that sending false information is better for oneself. Following in the Enlightenment tradition, Searle argues that practical reasoning, which involves mastery of at least one language, requires that actors intend to communicate. This intention includes constraining the content of statements to uphold veracity conditions. After distinguishing between these two accounts, I will artic- ulate the implications for explaining, and even informing actions, constitutive of post‐truth politics. I argue that the strategic view of communication is suffi- cient neither to model everyday conversation nor to reflect a public sphere useful for democratic govern- ment. Both the pedagogy of strategic communication as cheap talk, and its concordance with new digital information technologies, challenge norms of truthful- ness that underlie modern institutions essential to an effective public sphere. (shrink)

A policy of “preventive detention” has recently been debated in the British Parliament. Alarmed by the high-profile criminal activities of people suspected of having dangerous severe personality disorder , the government have made clear their intention to “indeterminately but reviewably detain” people with DSPD, after diagnosis by forensic psychiatrists, even if the individuals are yet to commit an offence. Such a policy may improve the safety of the public, but has obvious implications for civil liberties. This essay criticises the morality (...) of the government's intention and rejects the notion that the medical profession could ethically collude with such a policy. (shrink)

The Greek original of Galen's is lost, nor has a copy of the complete translation into Arabic, made by Hunayn b. Ishāq in the first half of the ninth century, come down to us, though some passages of it are quoted by various Arab authors. A summary of the translation, however, was discovered by P. Kraus in a miscellaneous manuscript in Cairo and published by him in the Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Egypt, vol. v/i.

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) stands among the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, especially in the field of economics; in his long and varied impact on the profession, he is second only to Maynard Keynes. He was a pragmatist in his economic philosophy, an “objective scientific investigator with no particular axe to grind” (Newman, et al., 746). His encyclopedic History of Economic Analysis, edited after his death by his wife and published in 1954, is a monument to his gigantic and (...) versatile achievements; and it remains the locus classicus of almost all works in this area. (shrink)

Although social scientists have identified diverse behavioral patterns among children from dissimilarly structured families, marketing scholars have progressed little in relating family structure to consumption-related decisions. In particular, the roles played by members of single-mother families—which may include live-in grandparents, mother’s unmarried partner, and step-father with or without step-sibling(s)—may affect children’s influence on consumption-related decisions. For example, to offset a parental authority dynamic introduced by a new stepfather, the work-related constraints imposed on a breadwinning mother, or the imposition of adult-level (...) household responsibilities on children, single-mother families may attend more to their children’s product preferences. -/- Without a profile that includes socio-economic, behavioral, and psychological aspects, efficient and socially responsible marketing to single-mother households is compromised. Relative to dual-parent families, single-mother families tend to have fewer resources and less buying power, children who consume more materialistic and compulsively, and children who more strongly influence decision making for both own-use and family-use products. Timely research would ensure that these and other tendencies now differentiate single-mother from dual-parent families in ways that marketers should address. Hence, our threefold goal is (1) to consolidate and highlight gaps in existing theory applied to studying children’s influence on consumption-related decision making in single-mother families, and (2) to propose a hybrid framework that merges two theories conducive to such research, and (3) to identify promising research propositions for future research. (shrink)

This manuscript considers the transmission dynamics of lymphatic filariasis with some intervention strategies in place. Unlike previously developed models, our model takes into account both the exposed and infected classes in both the human and mosquito populations, respectively. We also consider vaccinated, treated and recovered humans in the presented model. The global dynamics of the proposed model are completely determined by the basic ( $${\mathcal {R}}_0$$ ) and effective reproduction numbers ( $${\mathcal {R}}_e$$ ). We then use Lyapunov function theory (...) to find the sufficient conditions for global stability of both the disease-free equilibrium and endemic equilibrium. The Lyapunov functions show that when the basic reproduction number is less than or equal to unity, the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable, and when it is greater than unity then the endemic equilibrium is also globally asymptotically stable. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the effects of the intervention strategies and key parameters to the spread of lymphatic filariasis. The numerical simulations support the analytical results and illustrate possible model behavioral scenarios. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is to explore "the highly contested nature of [decision-making through adopting] a historically comparative and interdisciplinary approach." Internalist history of game theory treats decision theory as a science of making choices to maximize expected gain. Game theory is applied to nuclear deterrence and military strategy, building markets and designing institutions, analyzing collective action, developing jurisprudence, and addressing crime and punishment. This essay draws on recent historiography of Cold War decision-making to draw into focus the constructive (...) aspects of decision theory to argue that the perceived need to avoid worst-case scenarios has instead contributed to a world in which the worst outcome is probabilistically assured to occur over the long duree timeframe. (shrink)

Originally used to decipher the 1950s nuclear stalemate, the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” might reveal how resources are unfairly distributed today.