DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

In this article, we explore how deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices designed to “close the loop”—to automatically adjust stimulation levels based on computational algorithms—may risk taking the individual agent “out of the loop” of control in areas where (at least apparent) conscious control is a hallmark of our agency. This is of particular concern in the area of psychiatric disorders, where closed-loop DBS is attracting increasing attention as a therapy. Using a relational model of identity and agency, we consider whether (...) DBS designed for psychiatric regulation may require special attention to agency. To do this, we draw on philosophical work on relational identity and agency, connecting it with reports from people using first-generation DBS devices for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. We suggest a way to extend a notion of relational agency to encompass neural devices. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation is an invasive device-based neuromodulation technique that allows the therapeutic direct stimulation of subcortical and deep cortical structures following the surgical placement of stimulating electrodes. DBS is approved by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration for the treatment of movement disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder, while new indications, including Major Depressive Disorder, are in experimental development. We report the case of a patient with MDD who received DBS to the ventral internal capsule and ventral striatum bilaterally and presented with (...) 2 weeks of voltage-dependent Tourette-like symptoms including brief transient episodes of abrupt-onset and progressively louder coprolalia and stuttered speech; tic-like motor behavior in his right arm and leg; rushes of anxiety, angry prosody, angry affect; and moderate amnesia without confusion. We describe the results of the inpatient neuropsychiatric workup leading to the diagnosis of iatrogenic voltage-dependent activation of cortico-subcortical circuits and discuss insights into the pathophysiology of Tourette as well as safety considerations raised by the case. (shrink)

The Expanse is propelled into action when James Holden does what is morally right. In our everyday world, the prospect of spending time in jail short circuits the need for moral reflection. Not so in the anarchic world of The Expanse. This chapter uses just war theory to explore the moral obligations that exist when the political order breaks down. Philosophy helps us develop a moral language for making choices and evaluating actions. Michael Walzer accounts for the compassionate behavior by (...) arguing that soldiers, through reflection, come to recognize the basic moral obligations that humans have toward one another. He discerns five philosophical principles that govern our judgments about “how to fight”—all of which suggest that, deep down, we don't really believe the old canard that “all's fair in love and war.”. (shrink)

Persons who are dangerous and legally responsible, but who have not yet committed any currently recognised criminal offence, fall within the gap left between the domains of criminal justice and civil commitment. Many jurisdictions operate legal regimes that permit the detention of such persons in order to prevent the occurrence of anticipated criminal harms. These regimes often either fail to respect the principle of proportionality or contradictorily treat a dangerous offender as both legally responsible and not responsible at the same (...) time. In response to these problems, a number of preventive detention models have been proposed. Retributivist models seek to prevent the occurrence of anticipated criminal harms by requiring blame on the dangerous person’s part in order to warrant detention. However, these models are ill-equipped to deal with the problem of coextensiveness; i.e., they struggle to comprehensively reconcile proportionality in punitive sentencing with the period over which dangerous persons remain dangerous and during which one might therefore want them to be incapacitated. In order to achieve comprehensive incapacitation of dangerous persons for the duration of their dangerousness, retributivist models are forced to abandon their fidelity to proportionality in punitive sentencing, thereby losing themselves in the process. Accordingly, if the practice of preventive detention can be justified at all, such justification will not be of a retributivist character. (shrink)

Over the last decade, the increased use of work teams within organizations has been one of the most influential and far-reaching trends to shape the business world. At the same time, corporations have continued to struggle with increased unethical employee behavior. Very little research has been conducted that specifically examines the developmental aspects of employee ethical decision-making in a team environment. This study examines the impact of a team leader’s perceived integrity on his or her subordinates’ behavior. The results, which (...) came from a survey of 245 MBA students functioning for 2 years in a work team environment, indicate an interaction between leader integrity and team member ethical intentions. (shrink)

Der erste Teil hat den Logos und sein Erscheinen in der Zeit zum Inhalt, d.n. den Übergang vom reinen Logos in die Realität und damit die gegenseitige Bezogenheit von Logik und Realphilosophie, wobei das Verhältnis von Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik und seiner Philosophie der Religion im Fokus steht. Der zweite Teil weist die Religion als den Ort aus, in dem die Hegels Werk durchziehende Dialektik von unendlicher/absoluter und endlicher/ menschlicher Subjektivität kulminiert.

Mainstream addiction science is today widely marked by an antinomy between a neurologically determinist understanding of the human brain ‘hijacked’ by the biochemical allure of intoxicants and a liberal voluntarist conception of drug use as a free exercise of choice. Prominent defenders of both discourses strive, ultimately without complete success, to provide accounts that are both universal and value-neutral. This has resulted in a variety of conceptual problems and has undermined the utility of such research for those who seek to (...) therapeutically care for people presumed to suffer from addictions. This article contrasts these two contemporary discourses to two others that played vital historical roles in initiating both scientific and popular concern for addiction. These are the Puritan and civic republican discourses that dominated scholarly discussions of addiction in the early modern era. In each case, the place of values in these discussions is highlighted. By comparing them to their early modern historical antecedents, this article seeks to reflexively explore and develop more intellectually sound and therapeutically relevant alternatives to the troubled attempts at universality and value-neutrality now fettering debates in mainstream addiction science. (shrink)

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

In an effort to promote more theoretically incisive research regarding the specifically sociological aspects of addiction, this article critically discusses three prominent theoretical paradigms for the study of addiction - neurology, learning theory and symbolic interaction. Neurological theories and learning theories are found to inadequately provide for the role of culturally transmitted meanings in the addiction process. While symbolic interactionist theories have been centrally concerned with meaning, they have failed to theorize how issues of meaning might figure in the addict's (...) inevitable subjective estrangement from his or her drug-related activities. This stems from their failure to appreciate the reality of non-symbolic meaning, or meaningful experience that manifests pre-reflectively, at the level of our immediate bodily encounter with reality. The article concludes by suggesting that sociological students of addiction adopt a more thoroughly praxiological orientation to meaningful experience, so as to overcome the analytic limitations inherent in the antinomy between biological reductionism and disembodied cognitivism. (shrink)

This response considers how Friesen’s account of simulation helps us to think through the situation of politics under technological conditions. The alleviation of material and corporeal risks entailed in simulated dissection is compared to the manner in which emerging media technologies facilitate experiences of political participation that are evacuated of the burdens of engagement. This dynamic is finally attributed not to digital mediation itself, but to its operation under the sign of simulation.

This response considers how Friesen’s account of simulation helps us to think through the situation of politics under technological conditions. The alleviation of material and corporeal risks entailed in simulated dissection is compared to the manner in which emerging media technologies facilitate experiences of political participation that are evacuated of the burdens of engagement. This dynamic is finally attributed not to digital mediation itself, but to its operation under the sign of simulation.

This paper provides an account of the paradoxes of teaching democracy, the paradoxes of being a citizen in a liberal democracy, and the insights that can be gained from the model of citizenship that T.H. Green promoted. Green thought citizenship was predicated on the twin foundations of the community and the common good. Freedom for Green means individual self-determination coupled with recognition of the dependency relations between individuals and the community. Green is noteworthy not only as a theorist but also (...) as an active contributor to the development of public schools in England. A consideration of his arguments provides a model for educating citizens, addresses the paradoxes of democracy in education, and reveals elements of his philosophy that are relevant to educational issues today. (shrink)

Pierre Klossowski's career in philosophy is a brief but significant intervention into the manner in which the connections between desire, identity, and meaning are thought. Although Klossowski's influence on much of what is called French “post-structuralism” or “post-modernism” is frequently noted, Klossowski's development of the motif of the simulacrum is rarely traced in its proper context. Through readings of the texts of the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as his own ruminations on the polytheism of (...) the ancient Roman cult of Diana, Klossowski constructs a critique not only of the identity of the self but also of the supposed unity of reason and rational signs. Klossowski's critique demonstrates how meaningful discourse is produced from the basis of incommunicable affects, which project images in consciousness that, only then, are able to take the form of iterable simulacra. Our “gregarious” discourse in language is, thus, formed only indirectly from the affects and acquires its supposed unity only as it fails to express those affects. (shrink)

The present study concerns the issue of meaning in contemporary continental philosophy. In particular, it develops the two accounts of meaning offered by Heidegger and Levinas, each of whom presents us with a differing break from Husserl. As a first attempt to name the difference between these three thinkers, one could say that Husserl gives us an epistemological notion of meaning; whereas Heidegger gives us an ontological account, and Levinas gives us an ethical account. We will refine and reformulate this (...) division in relation to the issues of each chapter. ;We will thus see how both Heidegger and Levinas develop their separate notions in relation to Husserl's own revolutionary approach to the question of meaning. Whereas Husserl both replaced the term "experience" with the term "intuition" and gave a compelling account of the "prepredicative" roots of the meaningful, Heidegger advances the articulation of such a prepredicative realm of meaning even further than Husserl. He did so, however, in a way that ends up displacing Husserl's notion of intuition. This is the move from Husserl's account of phenomenological intuition to Heidegger's own notion of a more hermeneutic phenomenology . ;I will show how Heidegger articulates an account of meaning as that upon which any projection of understanding takes shape. Meaning becomes a quasi-transcendental, non-subjective notion of that which makes possible the disclosure of any "world." Levinas, on the other hand, offers an account of meaning---in intended opposition to Heidegger---as located primarily in the ethical exposure at the heart of language: in the "face-to-face" relation of Same and Other. He further develops his notion of meaning in terms of the notion of the saying and the said. Both Heidegger and Levinas give us a non-intentional account of the meaningful. For Heidegger it takes the form of a non-intentional background that makes possible both the "worldhood of the world" and the possibilities of Dasein . For Levinas, the meaningful is thought in terms of an interpersonal, quasi-ethical face to face relation between persons exposed to the vulnerability, obligation, and height of an "Other" in what he calls the "saying.". (shrink)

"Missouri's return to prominence among the ranks of college football teams is chronicled in this account of the Tigers' 2007 and 2008 seasons"--Provided by publisher.

Os primeiros seis parágrafos de O Desespero humano, de Kierkegaard, estão entre as passagens mais densas e difíceis de interpretar em toda sua obra. Nelas, ele expõe a natureza do eu em termos de relações e muitos têm interpretado isso como uma expressão da dialética de Hegel. Nesse artigo, leio aqueles parágrafos da lógica das relações de Peirce e mostro que Peirce nos permite entender Kierkegaard muito mais claramente do que Hegel. Além disso, apesar de tudo que Peirce e Hegel (...) têm em comum, Peirce o critica severamente com respeito à realidade da Segundidade. Analisando essa crítica e também o que Peirce e Kierkegaard dizem sobre a importância da dúvida vis-à-vis consciência, eu mostro que uma leitura Peirciana de Kierkegaard é bem mais frutífera do que a estruturaHegeliana que Kierkegaard conhecia. No final, eu reflito sobre a possibilidade de falar sobre um Kierkegaard semiótico e um Peirce existencialista. (shrink)

"By combining recent advances in the physical sciences with some of the novel ideas, techniques, and data of modern biology, this book attempts to achieve a new and different kind of evolutionary synthesis. I found it to be challenging, fascinating, infuriating, and provocative, but certainly not dull."--James H, Brown, University of New Mexico "This book is unquestionably mandatory reading not only for every living biologist but for generations of biologists to come."--Jack P. Hailman, Animal Behaviour , review of the first (...) edition "An important contribution to modern evolutionary thinking. It fortifies the place of Evolutionary Theory among the other well-established natural laws."--R.Gessink, TAXON. (shrink)

Historians have used university statutes and acts to reconstruct the official astrology curriculum for students in both the arts and medical faculties, including the books studied, their order, and their relation to other texts. Statutes and acts, however, cannot offer insight into what actually happened during lectures and in the classroom: in other words, how and why astrology was taught and learned in the medieval university. This paper assumes that the astrology curriculum is better understood as the set of practices (...) that constituted it and gave it meaning for both masters and students. It begins to reconstruct what occurred in the classroom by drawing on published and unpublished lecture notes. These offer insight into how masters presented the material as they did, and why. The paper argues three points: first, the teaching of astrology centered on demonstrations involving astrological instruments: specifically, various kinds of paper astrolabes. Second, the astrological instruction focused on conveying the pragmatics of astrology rather than esoteric, theoretical issues. Finally, astrology as it was taught in the arts curriculum was explicitly intended to provide a foundation for students who would advance to study medicine at the university. (shrink)