Each Local Research Ethics Committee (LREC) is expected to produce an annual report for its establishing authority. Reports from 145 LRECs were examined with regard to (a) whether the committees were working within the terms of the most recent guidelines from the Department of Health and (b) observations on the role of LRECs with particular reference to accountability. Most LRECs had produced a report, although their length varied greatly. Most reports showed how seriously the committee took its task. Most committees (...) met many of the guidelines; for example, almost all had two or more lay-members. The guideline most frequently not met was that committees should have no more than 12 members. Many committees review very large numbers of projects (maximum 351). Approximately two-thirds provide details in the annual report of individual project titles, their author and the committee decision; all reports should contain this information. Although it may in fact happen more generally, only 23 per cent of the reports referred to any form of monitoring of the eventual outcome of the research. A significant issue to arise from the reports is the extent to which the framework for the operation of LRECs has been confused by the development of the purchaser-provider split. The paper concludes with suggestions for remedying the situation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Global biodiversity declines are increasingly recognized as profound ecological and social crises. In areas subject to colonialization, these declines have advanced in lockstep with settler colonialism and imposition of centralized resource management by settler states. Many have suggested that resurgent Indigenous-led governance systems could help arrest these trends while advancing effective and socially just approaches to environmental interactions that benefit people and places alike. However, how dominant management and conservation approaches might be decolonized (i.e., how their underlying colonial structure (...) might be addressed, transformed, and replaced) is not always clear. Here, we describe a ‘Decolonial Model of Environmental Management and Conservation’ as an alternative paradigm to dominant approaches of conservation and management. The tenets of the model describe characteristics that might be expected of decolonized management, contrasted with those of dominant state-led approaches such as those embedded in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The model does not prescribe how Indigenous governments or communities ought to govern their own territories, but instead offers insights into how external management and conservation agencies and practitioners might support (or stop impeding) Indigenous-led governance. We illustrate the model with a conservation ‘bright spot’: grizzly bear stewardship in the area now referred to as the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, Canada, with a focus on work led by or in collaboration with, and within the territories of, the Haíɫzaqv, Kitasoo/xai’xais, Nuxalk, and Wuikinuxv First Nations. While acknowledging the important context-specific variability among place-based management and conservation applications, we also discuss the model’s broader applicability. (shrink)

There is no question that zombie thought experiments exert a strong pull on the philosophical imagination. This may be an embarrassment to the profession, as Daniel Dennett complains, but it is not an effect that is likely to vanish soon. It is natural to wonder how something as unique as consciousness could be associated with physical systems and to wonder what it would mean if it were altogether absent. I cannot possibly address all of the questions raised by my commentators (...) but I hope I can achieve some degree of clarification of what I was getting at in the original short article. Perhaps the simplest way to begin is to propose two `guiding questions' and consider where the answers lead us. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, heart, and abdomen, that generated incidental findings (IFs). The approach to managing these unexpected results remain a complex issue. Our objectives were to describe the CAHHM policy for the management of IFs, to understand the impact of disclosing IFs to healthy research participants, and to reflect on the ethical obligations of researchers in future MRI studies.MethodsBetween 2013 and 2019, 8252 participants (...) (mean age 58 ± 9 years, 54% women) were recruited with a follow-up questionnaire administered to 909 participants (40% response rate) at 1-year. The CAHHM policy followed a restricted approach, whereby routine feedback on IFs was not provided. Only IFs of severe structural abnormalities were reported.ResultsSevere structural abnormalities occurred in 8.3% (95% confidence interval 7.7–8.9%) of participants, with the highest proportions found in the brain (4.2%) and abdomen (3.1%). The majority of participants (97%) informed of an IF reported no change in quality of life, with 3% of participants reporting that the knowledge of an IF negatively impacted their quality of life. Furthermore, 50% reported increased stress in learning about an IF, and in 95%, the discovery of an IF did not adversely impact his/her life insurance policy. Most participants (90%) would enrol in the study again and perceived the MRI scan to be beneficial, regardless of whether they were informed of IFs. While the implications of a restricted approach to IF management was perceived to be mostly positive, a degree of diagnostic misconception was present amongst participants, indicating the importance of a more thorough consent process to support participant autonomy.ConclusionThe management of IFs from research MRI scans remain a challenging issue, as participants may experience stress and a reduced quality of life when IFs are disclosed. The restricted approach to IF management in CAHHM demonstrated a fair fulfillment of the overarching ethical principles of respect for autonomy, concern for wellbeing, and justice. The approach outlined in the CAHHM policy may serve as a framework for future research studies.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/nct02220582. (shrink)

Moody's thought-experiment invoking zombies to demonstrate the uniqueness of consciousness is commended. His conclusions accord well with previous ones arrived at by Penrose, Chalmers and myself. All these works lead to a disturbing conclusion: onsciousness, as something distinct from the brain processes, interferes with physical reality. Ergo, it is no longer possible to adhere to any of the modern theories of mind that preserve the completeness of physics. This conclusion is, in principle, testable.

Knock-down refutations are rare in philosophy, and unambiguous self-refutations are even rarer, for obvious reasons, but sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes philosophers clutch an insupportable hypothesis to their bosoms and run headlong over the cliff edge. Then, like cartoon characters, they hang there in mid-air, until they notice what they have done and gravity takes over. Just such a boon is the philosophers' concept of a zombie, a strangely attractive notion that sums up, in one leaden lump, almost everything that (...) I think is wrong with current thinking about consciousness. Philosophers ought to have dropped the zombie like a hot potato, but since they persist in their embrace, this gives me a golden opportunity to focus attention on the most seductive error in current thinking. (shrink)

Symposium discussion on Todd Moody's `Conversations with Zombies' , by Owen Flanagan, Thomas Polger, Daniel C. Dennett, Guven Guzeldere, Jaron Lanier, John McCarthy, Selmer Bringsjord, Mary Midgley, Avshalom C. Elitzur, Keith Chandler, David Hodgson and Charles T. Tart, with response from Todd C. Moody.

It is now generally agreed that in Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 13 means ‘mistake of fact’. The moralizing interpretation favoured by our Victorian forebears and their continental counterparts was one of the many misunderstandings fostered by their moralistic society, and in our own enlightened erais revealed as an aberration. In challenging this orthodoxy I am not moved by any particular enthusiasm for Victoriana, nor do I want to revive the view that means simply ‘moral flaw’ or ‘morally wrong action’. I shall (...) try to show that the word has a range of applications, from ‘ignorance of fact’ at one end to ‘moral defect’, ‘moral error’, at the other, and that the modern orthodoxy, though not as clearly wrong as the moralizing interpretation it displaced, restricts Aristotle's meaning in a way he did not intend, and does lessthan justice to his analysis of classical drama. (shrink)

In her masterly article on this passge, Dr. Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood goes most of the way towards solving two serious problems: the text of Lys. 645, where the vulgate makes the ‘bears’ more than ten years old, contrary to all other evidence; and the meaning of of A. Ag. 239 . She argues cogently that in Aeschylus means ‘shedding’ the saffron robe, as most editors including Fraenkel have thought, and not ‘letting her robes fall to the ground’ as Lloyd-Jones, followed by (...) Page, has argued. (shrink)

So Pearson. The strange series of hypodochmiacs here and atO.T.1207 ff., with brevis in longo without pause atAj.421 andO.T.1208, seems metrically self-contained, despite their syntactical interdependence (esp.Aj.421–2οὐκέτ' ἄνδρα μὴ | τόνδ' ἴδητ', so that the word-overlap ofοἷονinto iambics in Pearson's text is unlikely.ἑξερῶ μέγαshould therefore be writtenplena scriptura. Thenοἷον οὔτιν' ἁ Τροί|α στρατοῦ…is possible, but the ithyphallic with word-overlap, sometimes found in the syncopated iambics of Aeschylus, is foreign to Sophocles. Divideἐξερῶ μέγα, | οἷον οὔτινα | Τροία…Thenϕίλοι τοῖσδ' ὁμοῦ = (...) οἷον οὔτινα, i.e.δ= hyp., which is not certainly found, and the antistrophe has two syllables extra. (shrink)

It has long been accepted as a principle by editors and writers on Greek metre that brevis in longo and hiatus in tragic lyrics often coincide with some kind of sense-pause. The object of this inquiry is to determine the incidence of pause in such places, and show that it is significantly high; to show that there is a comparable incidence in the corresponding places in strophic systems; to show that period-ends determined by criteria other than brevis and hiatus are (...) attended by similar conditions. It might seem that if all this were true it would have been recognized long ago, particularly as the connection between sense and metrical structure, and symmetry of sense in strophe and antistrophe, has often been pointed out. (shrink)

7 πῖαρ Plut.: πυαρ pap.Ath. Pol.ἀνταράξας … ἐξεῖλε pap., coniecerat Gildersleeve: ἂν ταράξας ἐξέλη Plut.Solon is answering his critics. Thedemoshas never had it so good. The ‘bigger and stronger men’, μείζους καὶ βίαν ἀμείνονες, also have cause to thank him. For if anyone else had had this office, ‘he would not have restrained thedemos, nor would he have stopped, before’, etc. Plutarch introduces the lines in almost the same words.V. 7 is difficult. Bergk and others construe: ‘until, having stirred up (...) the milk, he had taken the cream’. There are two objections to this. Firstly, the word order would involve an interlacing of main and participial clauses which Greek normally eschews. Bergk claims that Solon is peculiar in the freedom of his hyperbaton, but the examples he quotes are not of this type and are very much easier. Secondly, the sense: ‘it is not usual to stir up milk when it is wanted to skim off cream’. Linforth recognised the force of this argument, and concluded, in the truth of the ancient evidence, that πῑαρ refers to butter. (shrink)

Are experience and stimulus necessarily alike? Wertheimer spoke of this as an “insidious and insistent belief”. By contrast, Watson devotes an entire book to the defense of the thesis that representation necessarily requires resemblance. I argue that this bold and important thesis is ambiguous between a historical and a systematic reading, and that in either one of these readings the thesis, for different reasons, will be found wanting. Second, a proper evaluation of it in either one of its possible interpretations (...) requires a careful analysis of the notion of resemblance. I proceed to supply some necessary distinctions and argue that, given such an analysis, Watson's thesis may be historically applicable only to ancient and medieval philosophy, while its systematic import is untenable. (shrink)

This line, composed of only three words, occurs near the beginning of a speech in which Orestes, having revealed himself to his sister, is passing on to her and toa sympathetic chorus consisting of slaves in the royal palace at Argos, the gist of the instructions Apollo, through his oracle at Delphi, has given him about avenging his murdered father. The God, less merciful than the ghost of King Hamlet, has ordered him to kill his mother as well as her (...) paramour. (shrink)

There was once a man in a certain village in the mountains, who made his living by making up stories, which he used to tell to the people of his village to while away their evenings. One day he went on a journey to a strange village far away in the plains, and there he saw a group of men sitting round another story-teller. Being curious to learn whether his rival was as good a story-teller as he was, he joined (...) the group and listened. He was astonished to find that the story being told was one he had made up himself. So when the story-teller had finished, the man took him aside and said, ‘That was a good story, but it is my story, which I made up, and you must pay me money for it.’ ‘You are wrong,’ said his rival. ‘It is my story, for I made it up myself this morning’. (shrink)