The ethical debate about neurotechnologies—including both drugs and implanted devices—has been largely framed around the questions of whether and when these technologies could damage or promote authenticity. Patients can experience changes in mood, behavior, emotion, or preferences—seemingly, changes in character or personality. Some describe such changes by saying they feel like different people; that they have become either more or less themselves; or that they feel as though some of their moods, behaviors, emotions or preferences are not their own. These (...) kinds of statements are used to describe both changes that a drug or device is... (shrink)

Many health care systems include programs that allow patients in exceptional circumstances to access medical interventions of as yet unproven benefit. In this article we consider the ethical justifications for—and demands on—these special access programs (SAPs). SAPs have a compassionate basis: They give patients with limited options the opportunity to try interventions that are not yet approved by standard regulatory processes. But while they signal that health care systems can and will respond to individual suffering, SAPs have several disadvantages, including (...) the potential to undermine regulatory and knowledge-generation structures that constitute significant public goods. The “balance” between these considerations depends in part on how broadly SAPs are used, but also on whether SAPs can be made to contribute to the generation of knowledge about the effects of health interventions. We argue that patients should usually be required to contribute outcome data while using SAPs. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine recent critiques of the debate about defining disease, which claim that its use of conceptual analysis embeds the problematic assumption that the concept is classically structured. These critiques suggest, instead, developing plural stipulative definitions. Although we substantially agree with these critiques, we resist their implication that no general definition of “disease” is possible. We offer an alternative, inductive argument that disease cannot be classically defined and that the best explanation for this is that the concept (...) is structured as a cluster. We further argue that we do not need to reject the possibility of defining the general concept “disease” to legitimate developing stipulative definitions of disease that are relative to particular purposes. A cluster definition of disease is compatible with contextually motivated definitions, which may be considered précisifications of the more general cluster concept. (shrink)

Recent evidence from the neurosciences and cognitive sciences provides some support for a narrative theory of self-understanding. However, it also suggests that narrative self-understanding is unlikely to be accurate, and challenges its claims to truth. This article examines a range of this empirical evidence, explaining how it supports a narrative theory of self-understanding while raising questions of these narrative's accuracy and veridicality. I argue that this evidence does not provide sufficient reason to dismiss the possibility of truth in narrative self-understanding. (...) Challenges to the possibility of attaining true, accurate self-knowledge through a self-narrative have previously been made on the basis of the epistemological features of narrative. I show how the empirical evidence is consistent with the epistemological concerns, and provide three ways to defend the notion of narrative truth. I also aim to show that neuroethical discussions of self-understanding would benefit from further engagement with the philosophical literature on narrative truth. (shrink)

Biological dysfunction is regarded, in many accounts, as necessary and perhaps sufficient for disease. But although disease is conceptualized as all-or-nothing, biological functions often differ by degree. A tension is created by attempting to use a continuous variable as the basis for a categorical definition, raising questions about how we are to pinpoint the boundary between health and disease. This is the line-drawing problem. In this paper, we show how the line-drawing problem arises within “dysfunction-requiring” accounts of disease, such as (...) those of Christopher Boorse and Jerome Wakefield. We then provide several detailed examples to establish that biological dysfunction cannot provide a boundary. We examine potential ways of resolving the line-drawing problem, either by dropping one of the claims that generates it, or by appealing to additional criteria. We argue that two of these options are plausible, and that each of these can be applied with regard to different diseases. (shrink)

Recently, concerns have been raised about the phenomenon of ‘overdiagnosis’, the diagnosis of a condition that is not causing harm, and will not come to cause harm. Along with practical, ethical, and scientific questions, overdiagnosis raises questions about our concept of disease. In this paper, we analyse overdiagnosis as an epistemic problem and show how it challenges many existing accounts of disease. In particular, it raises ques- tions about conceptual links drawn between disease and dysfunction, harm, and risk. We argue (...) that ‘disease’ should be considered a vague concept with a non-classical structure. On this view, overdiagnosed cases are ‘borderline’ cases of disease, falling in the zone between cases that are clearly disease, and cases that are clearly not disease. We then develop a pre ́cising definition of disease designed to provide practical help in preventing and limiting overdiagnosis. We argue that for this purpose, we can define disease as dysfunction that has a significant risk of causing severe harm to the patient. (shrink)

This paper examines potential ethical and legal issues arising during the research, develop- ment and clinical use of a proposed strategy in personalized medicine (PM): using human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived tissue cultures as predictive models of individ- ual patients to inform treatment decisions. We focus on epilepsy treatment as a likely early application of this strategy, for which early-stage stage research is underway. In relation to the research process, we examine issues associated with biological samples; data; health; vulnerable (...) populations; neural organoids; and what level of accuracy justifies using the iPSC-derived neural tissue system. In relation to clinical use, we examine potential uses in pre-natal screening, and effects on clinical decision-making. Although our focus is providing recommendations for researchers developing work in this area, we identify the novel issue of deciding on an acceptable accuracy level for the system. We also emphasize an issue thus far neglected in the ethics of PM: PM tends to represent treatment decisions as though they should be directed solely by biomedical information, but this in itself could be detri- mental to best personalizing treatment decisions in the clinic. (shrink)

Personalised medicine has been discussed as a medical paradigm shift that will improve health while reducing inefficiency and waste. At the same time, it raises new practical, regulatory, and ethical challenges. In this paper, we examine PM strategies epistemologically in order to develop capacities to address these challenges, focusing on a recently proposed strategy for developing patient-specific models from induced pluripotent stem cells so as to make individualised treatment predictions. We compare this strategy to two main PM strategies—stratified medicine and (...) computational models. Drawing on epistemological work in the philosophy of medicine, we explain why these two methods, while powerful, are neither truly personalised nor, epistemologically speaking, novel strategies. Both are forms of correlational black box. We then argue that the iPSC models would count as a new kind of black box. They would not rely entirely on mechanistic knowledge, and they would utilise correlational evidence in a different way from other strategies—a way that would enable personalised predictions. In arguing that the iPSC models would present a novel method of gaining evidence for clinical practice, we provide an epistemic analysis that can help to inform the practical, regulatory, and ethical challenges of developing an iPSC system. (shrink)

Technological advances are making devices that functionally replace body parts—artificial organs and limbs—more widely used, and more capable of providing patients with lives that are close to “normal.” Some of the ethical issues this is likely to raise relate to how such prostheses are conceptualized. Prostheses are ambiguous between being inanimate objects and sharing in the status of human bodies—which already have an ambiguous status, as both objects and subjects. At the same time, the possibility of replacing body parts with (...) artificial objects puts pressure on the normative status typically accorded to human bodies, seemingly confirming that body parts are replaceable objects. The paper argues that bodies’ normative status relies on the relation of a body to a person and shows that persons could have similar relations to prostheses. This suggests that in approaching ethical issues surrounding prostheses, it is appropriate to regard them as more like body parts than like objects. (shrink)

Recently, concerns have been raised about the phenomenon of 'overdiagnosis', the diagnosis of a condition that is not causing harm, and will not come to cause harm. Along with practical, ethical, and scientific questions, overdiagnosis raises questions about our concept of disease. In this paper, we analyse overdiagnosis as an epistemic problem and show how it challenges many existing accounts of disease. In particular, it raises questions about conceptual links drawn between disease and dysfunction, harm, and risk. We argue that (...) "disease" should be considered a vague concept with a nonclassical structure. On this view, overdiagnosed cases are 'borderline' cases of disease, falling in the zone between cases that are clearly disease, and cases that are clearly not disease. We then develop a précising definition of disease designed to provide practical help in preventing and limiting overdiagnosis. We argue that for this purpose, we can define disease as dysfunction that has a significant risk of causing severe harm to the patient. (shrink)

Neil Levy argues that while addicts who believe they are not addicts are self-deceived, addicts who believe they are addicts are just as self-deceived. Such persons accept a false belief that their addictive behaviour involves a loss of control. This paper examines two implications of Levy's discussion: that accurate self-knowledge may be particularly difficult for addicts; and that an addict's self-deceived belief that they cannot control themselves may aid their attempts at self-control. I argue that the self-deceived beliefs of addicts (...) in denial and of self-described addicts differ in kind. Unlike the self-deception of an addict in denial, that of the self-described addict allows them to acknowledge their behaviour. As such, it may aid an addict to develop more self-control. A paradoxical implication is that this self-deception may allow an addict more self-knowledge. (shrink)

Boorse’s biostatistical theory states that diseases should be defined in ways that reflect disturbances of biological function and that are objective and value free. We use three examples from contemporary medicine that demonstrate the complex issues that arise when defining the boundaries of disease: polycystic ovary syndrome, chronic kidney disease, and myocardial infarction. We argue that the biostatistical theory fails to provide sufficient guidance on where the boundaries of disease should be drawn, contains ambiguities relating to choice of reference class, (...) and is out of step with medical processes for identifying disease boundaries. Although proponents of the biostatistical theory might regard these practical issues as irrelevant to the aim of providing a theoretical account of disease, we take them to indicate the need for a theoretical account that is adequate for current needs—including limiting new forms of medicalization that are driven by the identification of disease based on dysfunction. Our processes for determining the boundaries for disease need to recognize that there is no value-free method for making these decisions. (shrink)

An increasing number of patients receive diagnoses of disease without having any symptoms. These include diseases detected through screening programs, as incidental findings from unrelated investigations, or via routine checks of various biological variables like blood pressure or cholesterol. In this article, we draw on narrative identity theory to examine how the process of making sense of being diagnosed with asymptomatic disease can trigger certain overlooked forms of harm for patients. We show that the experience of asymptomatic disease can involve (...) ‘mismatches’ between one’s beliefs about one’s health status on the one hand, and bodily sensations or past experience on the other. Patients’ attempts to integrate these diagnoses into their self-narratives often involve either forming inaccurate beliefs about bodily sensations and/or past experience, or coming to believe that feelings and experience do not necessarily track or predict health status, leading to an ongoing sense of vulnerability to ill health. These resulting alterations in self-understanding can sometimes be considered harmful, in view of their implications for ascriptions of responsibility and ongoing anxiety. (shrink)

Although health and disease occupy opposite ends of a spectrum, distinguishing between them can be difficult. This is the “line-drawing” problem. The papers in this special issue engage with this challenge of delineating the boundaries of disease. The authors explore different views as to where the boundary between disease and nondisease lies, and related questions, such as how we can identify, or decide, what counts as a disease and what does not; the nature of the boundary between the two categories; (...) and what sorts of considerations could justify the location of that boundary. In exploring these questions, the papers draw on detailed clinical examples, provide theoretical critiques of existing approaches to disease definition, and offer new ways to conceptualize key features in debates about disease, including harm and biological dysfunction. (shrink)

Designing and manufacturing medical devices for specific patients is becoming increasingly feasible with developments in 3D printing and 3D imaging software. This raises the question of how patient-specific devices can be evaluated, since our ‘gold standard’ method for evaluation, the randomised controlled trial, requires that an intervention is standardised across a number of individuals in an experimental group. I distinguish several senses of patient-specific device, and focus the discussion on understanding the problem of variations between instances of an intervention for (...) RCT evaluation. I argue that, despite initial appearances, it is theoretically possible to use RCTs to evaluate some patient-specific medical devices. However, the argument reveals significant difficulties for ensuring the validity of such trials, with implications for how we should think about methods of evidence gathering and regulatory approaches for these technologies. (shrink)

In this paper I seek to clarify the role of narrative in personal unity. Examining the narrative self-constitution view developed by Marya Schechtman, I use a case of radical personal change to identify a tension in the account. The tension arises because a narrative can be regarded either to capture a continuing agent with a loosely coherent, consistent self-conception – or to unify over change and inconsistency. Two possible ways of responding, by distinguishing senses of identity or distinguishing identity and (...) autonomy, are examined, but I argue that neither precisely maps this tension. I then develop a distinction between two ways in which narrative can unify: through “bottom-up” processes related to the connection between agency and self-conception; and “top-down” processes related to self-interpretative activity. The account provides ways to resolve some criticisms of narrative theories of identity, in particular in better accounting for the role of repudiated characteristics in narrative identity. (shrink)

Positive claims about narrative approaches to healthcare suggest they could have many benefits, including supporting person-centred healthcare (PCH). Narrative approaches have also been criticised, however, on both theoretical and practical grounds. In this paper we draw on epistemological work on narrative and knowledge to develop a conception of narrative that responds to these concerns. We make a case for understanding narratives as accounts of events in which the way each event is described as influenced by the ways other events in (...) the narrative are described. This view of narratives recognises that they can contribute knowledge of different kinds of connections between events: not just causal, and not just of patient’s perspectives. Additionally, narratives can add further epistemic value by suggesting potentially useful lines of inquiry. We take narrative approaches to healthcare to include clinicians considering both patients’ informational offerings and their own professional understandings as narratives. On this understanding, our account is able to overcome the major theoretical and practical criticisms that have been levelled against the use of narrative approaches in healthcare, and can help to explain why and how narrative approaches are consistent with PCH. (shrink)

Surgery is an important part of contemporary health care, but currently much of surgery lacks a strong evidence base. Uptake of evidence-based medicine (EBM) methods within surgical research and among practitioners has been slow compared with other areas of medicine. Although this is often viewed as arising from practical and cultural barriers, it also reflects a lack of epistemic fit between EBM research methods and surgical practice. In this paper we discuss some epistemic challenges in surgery relating to this lack (...) of fit, and investigate how resources from feminist epistemology can help to characterize them. We point to ways in which these epistemic challenges may be addressed by gathering and disseminating evidence about what works in surgery using methods that are contextual, pluralistic, and sensitive to hierarchies. (shrink)

Evidence in medicine can come from more or less trustworthy sources and be produced by more or less reliable methods, and its interpretation can be disputed. As such, it can be unclear when disagreements in medicine result from different, but reasonable, interpretations of the available evidence and when they result from unreasonable refusals to consider legitimate evidence. In this article, we seek to show how assessments of the relevance and implications of evidence are typically affected by factors beyond that evidence (...) itself, such as our beliefs about the credibility of the speaker or source of the evidence. In evaluating evidence, there is thus a need for reflective awareness about why we accept or dismiss particular claims. (shrink)

Programs of drug testing welfare recipients are increasingly common in US states and have been considered elsewhere. Though often intensely debated, such programs are complicated to evaluate because their aims are ambiguous – aims like saving money may be in tension with aims like referring people to treatment. We assess such programs using a proportionality approach, which requires that for ethical acceptability a practice must be: reasonably likely to meet its aims, sufficiently important in purpose as to outweigh harms incurred, (...) and lower in costs than feasible alternatives. In the light of empirical findings, we argue that the programs fail the three requirements. Pursuing recreational drug users is not important in the light of costs incurred, while dependent users who may require referral are usually identifiable without testing and typically need a broader approach than one focussing on drugs. Drug testing of welfare recipients is therefore not ethically acceptable policy. (shrink)

The literature of Twelve Step groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous contains apparently contradictory implications regarding powerlessness and personal responsibility. In this essay I examine the treatment of these concepts in Twelve Step literature and their implications for the self-conception of people in these programs. In the first section, I examine the literature to demonstrate that addicts are presented as powerless over, yet responsible for, their addictive behaviors. In the second section, I outline two potential ways people in Twelve Step programs (...) might reconcile this contradiction within their self-conception, but I argue that neither is satisfactory. In the third section, I draw on Paul Ricoeur's theory of narrative identity to develop an account of how someone ni a Twelve Step group could coherently understand herself as both powerless and responsible. (shrink)

Artificial devices that functionally replace internal organs are likely to be more common in the future. They are becoming more and more technologically feasible, increases in chronic diseases that can compromise various organs are anticipated, and donor organs will remain necessarily limited. More people in the future may have bodies that are partly nonorganic. How might artificial organs affect how we experience and conceptualize our bodies and how we understand the relation of the body to the experiencing, acting subject, or (...) self? Here, I focus on artificial heart devices (AHDs), including total artificial hearts (TAHs) and ventricular assist devices (VADs). While other devices, such as pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators, assist the heart, I focus on devices that replace rather than assist organic function. AHDs, I argue, may have two opposing effects. On the one hand, having an AHD could alter experience, seemingly confirming that selves are shaped by the specifics of embodiment. On the other hand, AHDs are likely to encourage people to regard bodies as machines that are separable from the self. AHDs thus both confirm and undermine a body-self dualism. People with these devices may come to regard their bodies as machinelike even while having an artificial part alters their subjective experience. (shrink)

Advances in prosthetic design should benefit people with limb difference. But empirical evidence demonstrates a lack of uptake of prosthetics among those with limb difference, including of advanced designs. Non-use is often framed as a problem of prosthetic design or a user’s response to prosthetics. Few studies investigate user experience and preferences, and those that do tend to address satisfaction or dissatisfaction with functional aspects of particular designs. This results in limited data to improve designs and, we argue, this is (...) pragmatically and ethically problematic. This paper presents results of a survey we conducted in 2017 with people with upper limb difference in Australia. The survey sought to further knowledge about preferences surrounding prosthetics and understanding of how preferences relate to user experience, perspective, and context. Survey responses demonstrated variety in the uptake, use and type of prosthetic—and that use of, preferences about, and impacts of prosthetics rely not just on design factors but on various contextual factors bearing on identity and social understandings of disability and prosthetic use. From these results, we argue that non-use of prosthetics could be usefully reframed as an issue of understanding how prosthetics can best support users’ autonomy. This supports the claim that there is a need to incorporate user engagement into design processes for prosthetic limbs, though further work is needed on methods for doing so. (shrink)

Vaccine refusal occurs for a variety of reasons. In this article we examine vaccine refusals that are made on conscientious grounds; that is, for religious, moral, or philosophical reasons. We focus on two questions: first, whether people should be entitled to conscientiously object to vaccination against contagious diseases ; second, if so, to what constraints or requirements should conscientious objection to vaccination be subject. To address these questions, we consider an analogy between CO to vaccination and CO to military service. (...) We argue that conscientious objectors to vaccination should make an appropriate contribution to society in lieu of being vaccinated. The contribution to be made will depend on the severity of the relevant disease, its morbidity, and also the likelihood that vaccine refusal will lead to harm. In particular, the contribution required will depend on whether the rate of CO in a given population threatens herd immunity to the disease in question: for severe or highly contagious diseases, if the population rate of CO becomes high enough to threaten herd immunity, the requirements for CO could become so onerous that CO, though in principle permissible, would be de facto impermissible. (shrink)

Review of Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine, ed James A Marcum.

Virtue and the Moral Life brings together distinguished philosophers and theologians with younger scholars of consummate promise to produce ten essays that engage both academics and students of ethics. This collection explores the role virtues play in identifying the good life and the good society.

Virtue and the Moral Life brings together distinguished philosophers and theologians with younger scholars of consummate promise to produce ten essays that engage both academics and students of ethics. This collection explores the role virtues play in identifying the good life and the good society.

The general theme of this reflection on laughing is that the place of laughter in everyday life has been reduced a great deal in Western societies since the beginning of the century and that this fact could have major consequences for the mental equilibrium of individuals and for the future of our civilizations. Moreover, philosophy and human sciences seem to have a certain responsibility for this disenchantment of our contemporaries with laughing.

Out of what the West now terms contemporary art, some would construct the synthesis and final accomplishment of every civilization, of all the great forms of art that have followed one another, blending and overlapping ever since man has existed and began expressing himself, like a fugue with innumerable developments that always returns to focus on the same theme, headed in the same direction. This evolution, as strangely loaded with analogies as it is rigidly anachronous, has borne, followed and determined (...) without failing, the mutations in our image. Art of the West in particular, in all its principal incarnations from ancient mythologies all the way to Rodin, from the Romanesque pilgrimage down to Daumier and Picasso—moving through culminating points of extreme harmony or tension: Rembrandt, Goya, Soutine—is presented as the great figure of a God in human appearance. Around this figure has been formed an entire world in which the real has continually been re-invented as art renewed its statements of it. Did this God and this world lose soul and memory on the day when the photographer's lens, a disastrously incorruptible witness, indicated the limits of very strict anthropomorphism? (shrink)

We hypothesize that effective collaboration is facilitated when individuals and environmental components form a synergy where they work together and regulate one another to produce stable patterns of behavior, or regularity, as well as adaptively reorganize to form new behaviors, or irregularity. We tested this hypothesis in a study with 32 triads who collaboratively solved a challenging visual computer programming task for 20 min following an introductory warm‐up phase. Multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis was used to examine fine‐grained (i.e., every 10 (...) s) collective patterns of regularity across team members' speech rate, body movement, and team interaction with the shared user interface. We found that teams exhibited significant patterns of regularity as compared to shuffled baselines, but there were no systematic trends in regularity across time. We also found that periods of regularity were associated with a reduction in overall behavior. Notably, the production of irregular behavior predicted expert‐coded metrics of collaborative activity, such as teams' ability to construct shared knowledge and effectively negotiate and coordinate execution of solutions, net of overall behavioral production and behavioral self‐similarity. Our findings support the theory that groups can interact to form interpersonal synergies and indicate that information about system‐level dynamics is a viable way to understand and predict effective collaborative processes. (shrink)

The number of depressed people has been increasing regularly. This increase is clearly aggravated by psycho-pharmacological factors. Psychoanalysts have encountered difficulties with a new type of patient for whom neurotic solutions do not work. For this reason, a new evaluation of the psycho-conception of the subject, melancholy and distress, and the social link is needed: this new evaluation allows us to define the nature of the relation between depression and society, and to plan a more effective clinical response.

Ameriške predsedniške volitve in številne evropske volitve, med drugim francoske predsedniške in parlamentarne volitve, zbujajo vtis ne le, da obstaja politično korektno mišljenje, temveč, še huje, kolektivna podreditev njeni sugestiji. Po drugi strani pa se je zahteva po »mišljenju preloma« krepila v številnih državah. Kaj je torej tisto, kar nam omogoča, da hkrati živimo v skupnem svetu, a se ne odpovemo lastni singularnosti? Mogoče je namreč, da je simptom, se pravi tisto, kar tvori našo singularnost, – če sledimo naukom psihoanalize (...) – na neki način znak, pogoj tako mišljenja spremembe kot tudi tistega, kar prispeva k obnovitvi družbene vezi. Obenem pa bi na tej podlagi bila mogoča upanje na izhod iz religioznega in izbira herezije proti neoliberalni religiji. (shrink)

The importance of touch to mammalian survival and well-being cannot be overstated. The capacity for action depends on the sense of touch, which is a necessary feature of an animal’s being-in-the-world (O’Shaughnessy, 1989, pp. 38–39). Interpersonal touch has been shown to be an important part of human welfare, including disease prevention and treatment (see Field, 2001 for review). Throughout a mammal’s lifespan, social relation- ships are also mediated by touch behavior (see Thayer, 1986 for review). Given these facts, the sense (...) of touch is relevant to a variety of topics in psychology, including but not limited to: perception, action, nonverbal behavior, relationships, development, emotion, and health. (shrink)

The social and cognitive science replication crisis is partly due to the limitations of commonly used statistical tools. Inferential statistics require that unsystematic measurement variation is independent of system history, and weak relative to systematic or causal sources of variation. However, contemporary systems research underscores the dynamic, adaptive nature of social, cognitive, and behavioral systems. Variation in human activity includes the influences of intrinsic dynamics intertwined with changing contextual circumstances. Conventional inferential techniques presume milder forms of variability, such as unsystematic (...) measurement error, as in a Gaussian distribution. Inferential statistics indicate an elementary Newtonian cause-effect metaphor for change that is inconsistent with known principles of change in complex systems. Pattern formation in self-organizing systems and quantum probability are used to illustrate theoretical metaphors that instantiate alternative notions of change in complex systems. Inferential statistics and related techniques are crucial scientific resources. However, in the social and behavioral sciences, they must be practiced in conjunction with an appropriate general systems framework that accommodates intrinsic fluctuations and contextual adaptation. (shrink)

A basic principle of objectification theory is that a mere glance from a stranger represents the potential to be sexualized, triggering women to take on the perspective of others and become vigilant to their appearance. However, research has yet to document gendered gaze patterns in social groups. The present study examined visual attention in groups of varying gender composition to understand how gender and minority status influence gaze behavior. One hundred undergraduates enrolled in psychology courses were photographed, and an additional (...) 76 participants viewed groupings of these photographs while their point of gaze was recorded using a remote eye-tracking device. Participants were not told that their gaze was being recorded. Women were viewed more frequently and for longer periods of time than men in mixed-gender groups. Women were also more likely to be looked at first and last by observers. Men spent more time attending to pictures of women when fewer women were in the group. The opposite effect was found for pictures of men, such that male pictures were viewed less when fewer pictures of men were in the group. Female observers spent more time looking at men compared to male observers, and male observers spent more time looking at women than female observers, though both female and male observers looked at women more than men overall. Consistent with objectification theory, women’s appearance garners more attention and interest in mixed-gender social groups. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

Cet entretien revient sur l’histoire des oppositions de gauche en URSS (notamment trotskystes, mais pas uniquement) et sur l’évolution actuelle de la Russie post-soviétique. Il critique les approches considérant l’URSS comme un « capitalisme d’État » et analyse les transformations à l’œuvre de la Russie contemporaine, notamment en terme de rapports de propriété. La nomenklatura joue un rôle contradictoire, tenant à conserver le contrôle de l’État tout en impulsant une vague de privatisations sous pression internationale.

Au sein de la science politique les approches sociologiques sont les plus réceptives à la psychologie sociale entendue comme cognition sociale. L'étude du politique a longtemps privilégié des objets institutionnels et l'influence des concepts de la psychologie sociale y est ancienne . Aujourd'hui de nouvelles questions de société et formes de mobilisation, comme l'intégration des minorités ou les rapports de genre, apparaissent. L'analyse des institutions et des objets classiques est renouvelée. Les problématiques font une grande place à la dynamique des (...) représentations, aux modes de raisonnement et d'inférences, aux formes de connaissance, à l'utilisation de l'information par les acteurs. Ainsi la science politique utilise de plus en plus les concepts et méthodes des approches cognitives.Within the field of political science, sociological approaches are more and more akin to social psychology understood as social cognition. The study of politics has long been focused on institutional subjects and influenced by concepts derived from social psychology . Today, new questions about society and new forms of mobilization such as the integration of minorities or gender relationships are emerging. As a result, a renewed analysis of institutions and traditional objects is required. Current problems are more and more centred on the dynamics of representations, on ways of reasoning, on forms of knowledge and on the use of information. Political science is increasingly using the concepts and methods of cognitive approaches. (shrink)

Complexity science is an investigative framework that stems from a number of tried and tested disciplines—including systems theory, nonlinear dynamical systems theory, and synergetics—and extends a common set of concepts, methods, and principles to understand how natural systems operate. By quantitatively employing concepts, such as emergence, nonlinearity, and self‐organization, complexity science offers a way to understand the structures and operations of natural cognitive systems in a manner that is conceptually compelling and mathematically rigorous. Thus, complexity science both transforms understandings of (...) cognition and reframes more traditional approaches. Consequently, if cognitive systems are indeed complex systems, then cognitive science ought to consider complexity science as a centerpiece of the discipline. (shrink)

L'itinéraire singulier d'une femme que l'on pourrait, par bien des aspects, considérer comme appartenant à un passé déjà lointain, suscite pourtant chez nombre de nos contemporains un intérêt de plus en plus grand. Edith Stein - connue également sous le nom, qu'elle prit au Carmel, de Thérèse-Bénédicte de la Croix - reste aux yeux de beaucoup un témoin particulièrement saisissant des drames fondamentaux qui ont jalonné le XXe siècle européen et dont nous sommes, pour le meilleur comme peut-être pour le (...) pire, les héritiers. C'est à ce titre que sa vie et son message peuvent constituer pour notre avenir une lumière digne d'être interrogée. S'il est vrai que l'Europe doit d'abord et avant tout être un espace où vivent et se rencontrent des êtres humains capables de promouvoir une culture empreinte de dignité et de responsabilité, il était alors tout naturel de prendre comme fil conducteur de ce colloque le thème essentiel de la réflexion steinienne : la question de la personne humaine. Quatre approches complémentaires ont été choisies pour déployer quelques-unes des composantes de cette interrogation : L'enracinement philosophique d'Edith Stein dans le milieu phénoménologique de Göttingen, sa situation dans l'histoire de son temps, son activité d'éducatrice au service de la formation intégrale de la personne humaine, l'accomplissement de son engagement intellectuel dans la réflexion théologique et l'expérience du mystère de la Croix. (shrink)

The differentiation of T Lymphocytes within the thymus is an important biological phenomenon during wich these cell acquire their functions to further control the immune system. Numerous experiments under various conditions have been devised to understand the different mechanisms involved in this complex process. Nevertheless, interpretation of these experiments lead to still contradictory debatable hypotheses. Modelisation of this process through classical simulation methods cannot be envisaged because they are not adapted to modifications of the model structure, which is the point (...) of interest. For these reasons, we proposed a new approach of automatic search for model. The program consists of four independent connected modules : The generator produces model, based on the rationale of formal grammars. Protocol and experimental data are stored in a set of experiments. The simulator using a protocol and a model provides simulated results. Finally, the supervisor by comparing simulated results and experimental data, adapts the model parameters to increase their fit and either chooses a new experiment to explore, or modifies the model structure. Change of the model structure is performed among still unexplored models according to their promise level, which is iteratively evaluated relatively to previously explored models through a proposed model distance. The generator is written in Prolog and the other modules in C++. The architecture of the program allows us to modify or complete a module without changing anything in the other modules. As a consequence, the proposed modeling approach conceived to study T lymphocyte differentiation within the thymus remains independent of this biological phenomenon and can be applied to other biological problems. (shrink)