Newborn screening (NBS) began in the 1960s by testing all newborns for a single condition—phenylketonuria, or PKU—which, when identified and treated early, significantly reduces morbidity. Over the...

When corporations are accused of unethical behaviour by external actors, executives from those organizations are usually compelled to offer communicative responses to defend their corporate image. To demonstrate the effect that corporate executives'' communicative responses have on third parties'' perception of corporate image, we present the Corporate Communicative Response Model in this paper. Of the five potential communicative responses contained in this model (no response, denial, excuse, justification, and concession), results from our empirical test demonstrate that a concession is the (...) most effective and robust communicative option. (shrink)

Over the past decade, there has been an extensive debate about whether researchers have an obligation to disclose genetic research findings, including primary and secondary findings. There appears to be an emerging (but disputed) view that researchers have some obligation to disclose some genetic findings to some research participants. The contours of this obligation, however, remain unclear. -/- As this paper will explore, much of this confusion is definitional or conceptual in nature. The extent of a researcher’s obligation to return (...) secondary and other research findings is often limited by reference to terms and concepts like “incidental,” “analytic validity,” “clinical validity,” “clinical relevance,” “clinical utility,” “clinical significance,” “actionability,” and “desirability.” These terms are used in different ways by different writers to describe obligations in different sorts of cases. -/- Underneath this definitional confusion is a general notion, supported by much of the literature, that findings only need to be disclosed when they surpass certain presumably objective or measureable thresholds, such as medical importance or scientific reproducibility. The problem is that there is significant variability in the way that these terms and concepts are used in the literature and, as such, in defining the scope of an obligation to return findings that surpasses the relevant thresholds. -/- The goal of this paper is to analyze the definitional muddle underlying the debate about returning genetic research findings, with the hope of answering a few questions. First, what is the range of definitions being used in this debate? Based on an extensive literature review, Part 1 will lay out a range of articulated definitions for each relevant term, with the goal of categorizing them into a handful of distinct types. Part 2 explains the definitional redundancy and confusion in the current literature, and, drawing from the terminological patterns identified in Part 1, outlines more cohesive building blocks to inform the development of future disclosure frameworks.Our minimum goal in articulating these conceptual building blocks is to promote clearer articulations of, and distinctions between, future disclosure frameworks. More ambitiously, we suggest which definitions and conceptualizations we consider most appropriate to use in future disclosure frameworks. Here, we seek to balance benefits to participants through the disclosure of important information with the minimization of undue burdens on individual researchers and the research enterprise more generally. -/- Our analysis builds upon the central philosophical distinction between concepts and conceptions. The basic idea is that the “concept” of X refers to the general (and relatively uncontroversial) structure/shape of X, while various “conceptions” of X are more particular, filled out, and controversial elaborations of the concept. In other words, “concepts” of X will be formal representations of X, while “conceptions” of X will be substantive interpretations of the key elements and relationships operating within that formal framework. (Implicit in this distinction is an important point about the nature of disagreement – namely, that in order for two or more parties to “disagree” about X as opposed to simply talk past one another, there must be at least enough shared agreement about X to know that the parties are referring to the same thing. A concept of X provides this point of common agreement, while competing conceptions of X mark the areas where disagreement arises.) In this paper, we will employ this distinction in a fundamental way to clarify exactly where the primary disagreements arise in the debate over disclosing genetic research findings. -/- We propose that, underlying all the seeming confusion and disagreement, there are three central and widely agreed upon concepts at work in this debate—validity, value, and volition. The first two concepts concern the nature of the information itself. An obligation to disclose only exists when findings are valid and have value but there are competing conceptions of how to determine or define validity and valuableness. The third concept—volition—pertains not to the information but rather to the person to whom it will be disclosed. Does that person want or not want the information, and what is the best way of determining this? Here, too, competing conceptions arise. Our key point, though, is that almost all of the ethical disagreement arises because of competing conceptions of these three concepts. Understanding and appreciating this key point can help to refocus the substantive debate by providing some common ground to start from in determining how best to interpret these shared concepts. This refocusing can, ideally, produce more productive debate and facilitate some progress in resolving it. (shrink)

According to previous research, threatening people’s belief in free will may undermine moral judgments and behavior. Four studies tested this claim. Study 1 used a Velten technique to threaten people’s belief in free will and found no effects on moral behavior, judgments of blame, and punishment decisions. Study 2 used six different threats to free will and failed to find effects on judgments of blame and wrongness. Study 3 found no effects on moral judgment when manipulating general free will beliefs (...) but found strong effects when manipulating the perceived choice capacity of the judged agent. Study 4 used pretested narratives that varied agents’ apparent free will and found that perceived choice capacity mediated the relationship between free will and blame. These results suggest that people’s general beliefs about whether free will exists have no impact on moral judgments but specific judgments about the agent’s choice capacity do. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson and Philosophy: Essays on the Philosophical Cast of Jefferson’s Writings is a collection of essays on topics that relate to philosophical aspects of Jefferson’s thinking over the years. Much historical insight is given to ground the various philosophical strands in Jefferson’s thought and writing on topics such as political philosophy, moral philosophy, slavery, republicanism, wall of separation, liberty, educational philosophy, and architecture.

Paternalism in the medical care of children is appropriate and ethically justifiable. However, dilemmatic disagreement by paternalistic agents as to which clinical choice is in the child's best interest may occur because of the underlying conflict between two rival standards for the moral value of life: longevity versus quality. Neither standard is unreasonable. Either could be the basis for choice of medical care by the parents or by the pediatrician. Having the child choose between options disputed by his parents and (...) the pediatrician is unlikely to resolve their conflict. Exercise of informed consent by the adolescent requires agreement by his parents to relinquish their paternalistic veto. The probable best-interest choice by the child when he has matured could be reasonably made from either standard. Therefore, the longevity/quality of life question ought not ordinarily to be foreclosed by paternalistic authority which opts for one standard to the exclusion of the other. Medical interventions, paternalistically determined, are justified in the face of deteriorating quality, but only as long as the interventions themselves do not cause deterioration. Application of this limitation of paternalism to the zone of agreement between the rival life standards is made to clinical case examples. Multiple extrinsic criteria may measure the quality of life. Three quality factors, sensation of pain, capacity to communicate and physical functioning are considered. The extent of the zone of agreement between the two life standards varies because quality of life is a relative good, contingent both upon which extrinsic criteria are selected to assess it and upon the priorities which are set among these criteria. (shrink)

Recent advances in philosophical thinking about consciousness, such as cognitive phenomenology and mereological analysis, provide a framework that facilitates using computational models to explore issues surrounding the nature of consciousness. Here we suggest that, in particular, studying the computational mechanisms of working memory and its cognitive control is highly likely to identify computational correlates of consciousness and thereby lead to a deeper understanding of the nature of consciousness. We describe our recent computational models of human working memory and propose that (...) three computational correlates of consciousness follow from the results of this work: itinerant attractor sequences, top-down gating, and very fast weight changes. Our current investigation is focused on evaluating whether these three correlates are sufficient to create more complex working memory models that encompass compositionality and basic causal inference. We conclude that computational models of working memory are likely to be a fruitful approach to advancing our understanding of consciousness in general and in determining the long-term potential for development of an artificial consciousness specifically. (shrink)

Background: Ethics support services are growing in Europe to help doctors in dealing with ethical difficulties. Currently, insufficient attention has been focused on the experiences of doctors who have faced ethical difficulties in these countries to provide an evidence base for the development of these services.Methods: A survey instrument was adapted to explore the types of ethical dilemma faced by European doctors, how they ranked the difficulty of these dilemmas, their satisfaction with the resolution of a recent ethically difficult case (...) and the types of help they would consider useful. The questionnaire was translated and given to general internists in Norway, Switzerland, Italy and the UK.Results: Survey respondents ranged in age from 28 to 82 years, and averaged 25 years in practice. Only a minority reported having access to ethics consultation in individual cases. The ethical difficulties most often reported as being encountered were uncertain or impaired decision-making capacity , disagreement among caregivers and limitation of treatment at the end of life . The frequency of most ethical difficulties varied among countries, as did the type of issue considered most difficult. The types of help most often identified as potentially useful were professional reassurance about the decision being correct , someone capable of providing specific advice , help in weighing outcomes and clarification of the issues . Few of the types of help expected to be useful varied among countries.Conclusion: Cultural differences may indeed influence how doctors perceive ethical difficulties. The type of help needed, however, did not vary markedly. The general structure of ethics support services would not have to be radically altered to suit cultural variations among the surveyed countries. (shrink)

When external groups accuse a business organization of unethical practices, managers of the accused organization usually offer a communicative response to attempt to protect their organization's public image. Even though many researchers readily concur that analysis of these communicative responses is important to our understanding of business and society conflict, few investigations have focused on developing a theoretical framework for analyzing these communicative strategies used by managers. In addition, research in this area has suffered from a lack of empirical investigation. (...) In this paper we address both of these weaknesses in the existing literature. First, we explicate Impression Management Theory as an appropriate framework for studying organizational communicative responses, paying particular attention to the concept of accounts. Second, we critique previous investigations of organizational accounts and discuss the major contributions of our study. Third, we propose a coding system and content analyze the accounts offered by managers from 21 organizations that were recently the targets of consumer boycotts. Finally, we report the results of our empirical investigation and discuss ethical issues related to organizational accounts. (shrink)

The Ockhamist claims that our ability to do otherwise is not endangered by God’s foreknowledge because facts about God’s past beliefs regarding future contingents are soft facts about the past—i.e., temporally relational facts that depend in some sense on what happens in the future. But if our freedom, given God’s foreknowledge, requires altering some fact about the past that is clearly a hard fact, then Ockhamism fails even if facts about God’s past beliefs are soft. Recent opponents of Ockhamism, including (...) David Widerker and Peter van Inwagen, have argued along precisely these lines. Their arguments, if successful, would undermine Ockhamism while avoiding the controversy over the alleged softness of facts about God’s past beliefs. But these arguments do not succeed. The past facts they rely on must be clear and uncontroversial examples of hard facts about the past, and these facts must be such that an ability to refrain from the relevant future action implies an ability to alter the relevant hard fact. We demonstrate the flaw in these arguments by showing how they rely on past facts that do not satisfy these criteria. The Ockhamist may have troubles, but this type of argument is not one of them. (shrink)

As a first step in involving user emotion in human‐computer interaction, a memory‐based expert system (JANUS; Kearney, 1991) was designed to interpret facial expression in terms of the signaled emotion. Anticipating that a VDU‐mounted camera will eventually supply face parameters automatically, JANUS now accepts manually made measurements on a digitized full‐face photograph and returns emotion labels used by college students. An intermediate representation in terms of face actions (e.g., mouth open) is also used. Production rules convert the geometry into these. (...) A dynamic memory (Kolodner, 1984; Schank, 1982) interprets the face actions in terms of emotion labels. The memory is dynamic in the sense that new emotion labels can be learned with experience. A prototype system has been implemented on a Sun 2/120 system using POPLOG. Validation studies on the prototype suggest that the interpretations achieved are generally consistent with those of college students without formal instruction in emotion signals. (shrink)

This paper attempts to respond to the critique that critical thinking courses may reflect a cultural bias. After elaborating a list of constitutive dispositions and abilities taught in the critical thinking curriculum (e.g. a direct approach to writing and speaking, care about the dignity and worth of every person, positions towards deductive reasoning, shared decision-making, etc.), the author considers arguments for why several of these might reflect Western, non-universal values. In each case, the author argues for the conclusion that these (...) values, though they could be applied in ways that reflect a cultural bias, are not inherently biased. Next, the author offers an outline of a more systematic examination of cultural bias. After reiterating the “tentative conclusion” that critical thinking is not culturally biased, the paper concludes by considering the various ways in which critical thinking might be promoted so as to ensure its sensitivity to cultural differences. (shrink)

After an intensive 4-year process, the World Medical Association (WMA) has revised its International Code of Medical Ethics (ICoME). In their report outlining this process, Parsa-Parsi et al not only describe how the WMA sought to ‘cultivat[e] international agreement’ on a ‘global medical ethos’, but also outline the philosophical framework of the ICoME: how the WMA, as the ‘global representation of the medical profession’, created and revised the ICoME through the process of international professional self-regulation.1 However, there is a significant (...) tension to be found in this framework—one which contrasts the international scope of the ICoME with the supposed source of its legitimacy. Here, we seek to characterise this tension and the doubt which it casts on the legitimacy of the ICoME. (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)

The thesis that there can be vague objects is the thesis that there can be identity statements which are indeterminate in truth-value (i.e., neither true nor false) as a result of vagueness (as opposed, e.g., to reference-failure), "the singular terms of which do not have their references fixed by vague descriptive means". (if this is "not" what is meant by the thesis that there can be vague objects, it is not clear what "is" meant by it.) the possibility of vague (...) objects should not be taken, in itself, to imply the more radical thesis that the identity relation can be one of "degree". one can hold that the concept of degrees of identity is absurd (how can one thing be more or less identical to another?) "and" that indeterminacy in identity is possible; hence, any incoherence in the idea of degrees of identity does not thereby undermine the idea of indeterminate identity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 1, April 2000, pp. 171-177 Hume's Revised Racism Revisited AARON GARRETT John Immerwahr's brief note "Hume's Revised Racism" is doubtless one of the most intriguing recent discussions of Hume and racism.1 Immerwahr presents a thesis as to why Hume revised a footnote originally added to his essay "Of National Characters" (hereafter "ONC") in 1753. In this note I will examine and dispute Immerwahr's (...) thesis, which I believe can be shown to be seriously flawed. It is important to do so, as Immerwahr's note has been quoted a number of times in books and articles on Hume, and his thesis has been taken as gospel without sufficient examination of the grounds for his claims.2 As a consequence, Immerwahr's thesis is in danger of becoming a stubborn belief, even if not properly supportable. The controversy about Hume's racism centers on one infamous footnote added to the essay "Of National Characters" in the 1753-1754 edition of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. Why should we care about one footnote? We should care because the footnote seems to go against the image of a philosopher we thought we knew, and whom we likely esteem. In addition, it is shockingly bigoted. It reads in its entirety: I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no Aaron Garrett is at the Department of Philosophy, Boston University, 745 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA. e-mail: garrett@bu.edu 172 Aaron Ganett sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of which none ever discovered any symptom of ingenuity; tho' low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but 'tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.3 The footnote was not present in the 1748 edition of the Essays, Moral and Political, or Three Essays, Moral and Political, where ONC first saw light. In the 1768 edition there is one very minor alteration (from "tho' low people" to "though low people"). In the 1770 edition the footnote becomes an endnote, M,4 and there are again a few minor changes (from "betwixt these breeds of men" to "between these breeds of men"; from "of which never discovered" to "of whom never discovered"; for "'tis likely he is admired," read "it is likely he is admired") and one interesting substantive change (for "admired for very slender accomplishments," read "admired for slender accomplishments"). The most important change from the 1753 version of the note is in the 1777 posthumous edition, which Hume had corrected before he died. Hume rewrote the first two lines of 177OM, to read in 1777M: I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.5 In "Hume's Revised Racism," Immerwahr argues that it is likely that Hume, after reading James Beattie's "Essay On Truth" and in light of his criticisms, revised the footnote in the 1777 edition of ONC. Immerwahr cites two pieces of evidence, a letter from Hume to Strahan to which he refers but does not quote, and Beattie's criticisms of Hume, which Hume may have read (although how much of it he read... (shrink)

In this discussion piece, I argue that David Lewis fails to support his claim that time-travelling Tim cannot kill his Grandfather in 1921. This result, in turn, undermines Lewis’s contextualist solution to the Grandfather Paradox—i.e. conceding that Tim can and cannot kill Grandfather, but relative to different contexts in each case.

Philosophers dispute whether an effect can be earlier than its cause (i.e. whether backwards causation can occur). For example, could a trainwreck cause a psychic to have earlier knowledge of it? Max Black tried to show backwards causation to be impossible but he failed to do so, or so I will argue. Nonetheless, his famous article can still teach us something important about certain cases of backwards causation.

This article is a critical discussion of David Owen's book, _Hume's Reason. Owen rightly emphasizes (i) that an understanding of Hume's theory of reasoning is essential to understanding his philosophy and (ii) that an understanding of early modern antiformalism in logic is crucial to understanding Hume's theory of reasoning. Against most commentators, Owen and I agree that Hume's famous conclusion about inductive inferences, i.e., that they are "not determin'd by reason"--is a causal rather a normative claim; however, I dispute Owen's (...) particular interpretation of this conclusion, arguing instead for an interpretation that allows Hume to use the term 'reason' univocally to mean "the inferential faculty." While agreeing with Owen that Hume regards the "wise" use of reason as a moral virtue, I argue that Hume's _endorsement of the use of reason is not entirely dependent on this fact. (shrink)