Forensic psychologists face a variety of ethical issues in conducting evaluations. One such issue is attorney presence during a forensic evaluation. In forensic evaluations, it is necessary to use standardized procedures while also attending to the rights of the individuals being assessed. This article examines the neuropsychological literature on extraneous influences in evaluations including effects of attorney presence. Then the article discusses the limited knowledge about attorney presence during forensic evaluations, addresses attorney motivations for being present during an evaluation, and (...) considers attorney presence in the context of ethical mandates. Finally, suggestions are offered for forensic clinicians confronted with attorneys who wish to be present during assessments. (shrink)

The American Psychological Association's (APA's) as well as other professional organizations' (e.g., American Psychiatric Association) removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder represented a paradigmatic shift in thinking about exual orientation. Since then, APA (2000) disseminated guidelines for working with lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) clients, and a variety of scholars and researchers alike have advocated affirmative therapeutic interventions with LGB individuals. Despite these efforts, the controversy over treating individuals with LGB orientations using nonaffirmative techniques continues. In this discussion, the (...) limited evidence regarding the efficacy and effects of conversion therapy is surveyed, particularly in the context of empirically supported treatment criteria summarized by Division 12 (clinical psychology) of the APA. Authors then consider the resulting ethical considerations in performing conversion therapy and propose alternative uses of affirmative therapy on the basis of ethical standards defined by APA. Finally, options for treating LGB individuals who are coming to terms with their sexual orientations are discussed. (shrink)

This collection of research papers explores the implications of quantum cosmology and the status of the laws of nature for theological and philosophical issues regarding God's action in the world. The main goal is to contribute to constructive theology as it engages current research in the natural sciences, and to investigate the philosophical and theological elements in ongoing theoretical research in the natural sciences.

This Essay examines the elegantly simple idea that consent to medical treatment or participation in human research must be “informed” to be valid. It does so by using as a case study the controversial clinical research trial known as the Surfactant, Positive Pressure, and Oxygenation Randomized Trial. The Essay begins by charting, through case law and the adoption of the common rule, the evolution of duties to secure fully informed consent in both research and treatment. The Essay then utilizes the (...) SUPPORT study, which sought to pinpoint the level of saturated oxygen that should be provided to extremely low birth weight infants to demonstrate modern complexities and shortcomings of the duty to secure informed consent. This Essay shows how the duty is measured by foreseeability of risks and benefits in human research and why federal regulators believed the tradeoffs in risk and benefits from differing oxygen levels administered in the support study were foreseeable. It then explores the contours of the duty to secure informed consent when applied to researchers who also serve as treating physicians, highlighting how common law duties differ in jurisdictions that apply the professional standard and those that apply the patient-centered material risk standard. This Essay provides new insight into what the law must do to make real the notion that [e]very human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his body.”. (shrink)

As mechanical restraints have never been proven effective in clinical practice, they should not be used routinely. They should be considered a non‐validated therapy requiring consent.

(2009). I like you, I like you not: Understanding the formation of context-dependent automatic attitudes. Cognition & Emotion: Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 1118-1152.

This collection of 21 essays explores the creative interaction among the cognitive neurosciences, philosophy, and theology. It is the result of an international research conference co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory, Rome, and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley.

The issue of coming into being in Greek philosophy is investigated mostly by specialists in language analysis and philological science. Plato versus Parmenides, Robert J. Roecklein brings to the fore Plato's refutation of Parmenides' argument in his famous dialogue by that name. Roecklein offers an unprecedented exposition of the dialogue the Parmenides, and seeks to illuminate a political dimension in Parmenides' early formulations of the challenges made to the reality of coming into being in nature.

Plato and the trial of Socrates -- What is philosophy? -- Euthyphro : defining philosophical terms -- The apology, Phaedo, and Crito : the trial, immortality, and death of Socrates -- Philosophy of religion -- Can we prove that God exists? -- St. Anselm : the ontological argument -- St. Thomas Aquinas : the cosmological argument -- William Paley : the teleological argument -- Blaisepascal : it is better to believe in God's existence than to deny it -- William James (...) : free choice is the basis of belief -- Does the idea of a good God exclude evil? -- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz : God can allow some evil -- David Hume : a good God would exclude evil -- Ethics -- Are ethics relative? -- Ruth Benedict : ethics are relative -- W.T. Stace : ethics are not relative -- Are humans always selfish? -- Humans are always selfish : Glaucon's challenge to Socrates -- James Rachels : humans are not always selfish -- Which is basic in ethics : happiness or obligation? -- Aristotle : happiness is living virtuously -- Jeremy Bentham : happiness is seeking the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people -- Immanuel Kant : duty is prior to happiness -- Friedrich Nietzsche : happiness is having power -- Jean-Paul Sartre : existentialist ethics -- Rosemarie Tong : feminist ethics are different -- Contemporary moral problems : abortion, homosexuality, animal rights -- Jane English : are most abortions moral? -- Peter Singer : do animals have rights? -- Knowledge -- What is knowledge? -- Plato : knowledge is warranted, true belief -- What method is best for acquiring knowledge? -- Charles Sanders Peirce : four approaches to philosophy -- How do we acquire knowledge? -- René Descartes : knowledge is not ultimately sense knowledge -- John Locke : knowledge is ultimately sensed -- Immanuel Kant : knowledge is both rational and empirical -- How is truth established? -- Bertrand Russell : truth is established by correspondence -- Francis H. Bradley : truth is established by coherence -- William James : truth is established on pragmatic grounds -- Can we know the nature of causal relations? -- David Hume : cause means regular association -- David Hume : there are no possible grounds for induction -- Metaphysics -- Why is there something rather than nothing? -- Parmenides : being is uncaused -- Lao-Tzu : non-being is the source of being -- Is reality general or particular? -- Plato : universals are real -- David Hume : particulars are real -- Of what does reality consist? -- René Descartes : reality consists of mind and matter -- Paul Churchland : reality consists of matter -- George Berkeley : reality consists of ideas -- John Dewey : reality consists of mental and physical qualities -- Are humans free? -- Holbach : humans are determined -- Robert Kane : humans are free -- Social and political philosophy -- What is liberty? -- Fyodor Dostoevski : liberty and authority -- John Stuart Mill : liberty is independence from the majority's tyranny -- Martin Luther King, Jr. : liberty and racial prejudice -- Which government is best? -- Thomas Hobbes : monarchy is best -- John Locke : democracy is best -- Karl Marx : communism and nonalienated labor is best -- Alexis de Tocqueville : democracy can have serious problems -- Karl Popper : utopias lead to violence -- Aesthetics -- What constitutes the experience of beauty? -- Plotinus : beauty, sensuous, and ideal -- What is the function of art? -- Aristotle : the nature of tragedy -- Henri Bergson : the nature of comedy -- Philosophy and the good life -- Classic views of the good life -- Epicurus : Epicurus and the pleasant life -- Epictetus : Epictetus and the life of self-control -- What gives life meaning? -- Leo Tolstoy : faith provides life's meaning -- Albert Camus : each person determines his or her life's meaning -- What is the value of philosophy? -- Bertrand Russell : the value of philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:EPILOGUE Robert J. Daly, SJ. Boston College April 2002 Iwill arrange my comments under four headings: (1) what we had hoped to accomplish; (2) what we actually did accomplish; (3) what we may have learned from this; (4) what this might now enable us to do in thefuture. This epilogueisbeingwritten in April, 2002,twenty-twomonths after the conference. To draw what good we can from this delay, writing at this (...) distance allows me to summarize and draw conclusions with, perhaps, a bit more balance. On the other hand, my listening again to the audio record in the course ofpreparing this publication has enabled me to relive something of the original experience. (1)As I indicated in the introduction, we had unrealistically hoped that, by the time ofthe conference, the five presenters, and perhaps also the twoprincipals inthe "Girard-Lonergan Conversation," wouldhavealready exchanged with each other not just first drafts, but even second drafts of their papers, and that the conference itself would then be invited to join a conversation that was already well under way. As it turned out, I couldn't muster the organizational skills and resources needed to achieve this. But reflecting after the fact, I can see that so carefully detailed a preparation might have been counterproductive. Carrying out our original plan might have been at the cost ofimposing more ofa Western analytic pattern on our discussion ofother traditions, and of!thus smothering from the outset some of the insight that did occur. We had also hoped that the opening "Girard-Lonergan Conversation" would provide an analytic resource for the rest of the meeting. But that did not happen to any great extent. (2)The proximate preparation for this conference began with a draft version ofmy paper being sent to the other major presenters. I opened with 194Robert J. Daly, SJ. a series of brief sketches of salient points in the often unhappy but also occasionally felicitous history ofChristianity on this theme ofviolence and institution. Then, after emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between the normative and the descriptive, I tried to make some sense, both rational and theological, of all this data, especially by reflecting on the influences and consequences ofthe belief in hell, on the one hand, and the hope of universal salvation, on the other. The next major religious theme was Judaism. Reuven Kimelman provided a detailed—and, for some, overwhelming—glimpse of the way the talmudic traditions deal with the theme of war and its restrictions. This highly text-oriented and interpretation-of-texts driven presentation seemed to many, at first, to be irrelevant to mimetic theory and to the need to be confronting actual violence. But, in the course of Sandor Goodhart's response, and in the course ofthe at times spirited discussion that followed, we began to understand that how one interprets texts and traditions, and how these are played off against each other, is indeed fundamental to the way Jews typically try to deal with the practical challenges of violence. Qamar-ul Huda's presentation on IsIamfocused stronglyonthe way the spiritual teachings of Islam—i.e., islam as a religion rather than Islam as a political or national institution—foster peace. The initial reaction was somewhat similarto the reaction to Kimelman's paper: disappointment that Huda was not talking more directly about contemporary Muslim extremist violence. But here, too, the discussion enabled us to catch a glimpse both of the inner spiritual resources of Islam, and of the limitations ofthe range of concerns that Westerners typically bring to the table. Francis Clooney, in his presentation ofHinduism, strongly emphasized the great variety in Hinduism, stressing that one cannot speak ofHinduism as such. Much of this variety comes from the several millennia of Hindu history, and from the complex relationships to Buddhism and Jainism which, themselves, are important parts of Hindu history, and also from the fact that only recently have Hindus, after centuries of Moslem or Colonial domination, once again returned to positions of political and military power. Finally, Christopher Ives's presentation on Buddhism, in a way similar to my presentation on Christianity, but more extensively or more consequently, pointed out the various ways in which Buddhism has been politically and... (shrink)

This book examines the role that natural philosophy plays in the emergence of Early Modern political thought. Robert J. Roecklein argues that the natural philosophy of Early Modernity, especially its indictment of sense perception, constitutes a major political foundation for the more concrete doctrines of political science developed by Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza.

The task of speaking the truth is an infinite labor: to respect it in its complexity is an obligation that no power can afford to shortchange, unless it would impose the silence of slavery (Foucault 1989, p. 308).... the attainment of truth is the outcome of the development of complex and elaborate methods of searching, methods that... in many respects go against the human grain, so they are adopted only after long discipline in a school of hard knocks (Dewey [1925] (...) 1988, pp. 234-35). (shrink)

THERE is no trap that is easier to stumble into than that of trying to show whether one philosopher did or did not answer the problem of another philosopher. The trap consists in the tendency to think that both philosophers handled the problem in precisely the same way, even though they represent two quite different traditions. This is especially true of thinkers like David Hume and Charles Sanders Peirce. John Smith has shown quite convincingly that we cannot understand the American (...) pragmatists by limiting discussion to the epistemological questions of the British empiricist tradition stemming from Hume, Mill, and Russell. And A. J. Ayer can be faulted for attempting to do just that. However, it is possible for one to treat of Peirce's answer to Hume on necessary connection without falling into the trap. First of all, both philosophers raised the same kind of question. It is clear that Peirce had Hume specifically in mind when on many an occasion he attacked nominalism and defended real connections. But they differed in that Peirce defended his position from a broader perspective enabling him to arrive at a more satisfactory conclusion. To establish this thesis, it will be necessary to focus on several aspects of their thought that bear upon the topic under discussion. Undoubtedly the task of selection and interpretation of details has many a trap of its own, but it is hoped that the more obvious ones can be avoided. (shrink)

Robert Roth, among the first few Catholics to write favorably, even if critically, about American pragmatism, presents here a creative piece of comparative philosophy in which he achieves a long-term goal of attempting a reconciliation between pragmatism and a classical spiritual and religious perspective. The title, Radical Pragmatism, is an adaptation of William James’s "radical empiricism." James had argues that the classical empiricists, Locke and Hume, did not go far enough in their account of experience. They missed some of (...) its most important aspects, namely connections and relations, and as a result they were left with discrete sense data and sense objects. (shrink)

The ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is a research topic with both theoretical and practical significance. However, the ethical and moral aspects of conceptual, ontological, semantic, and knowledge modeling, more specifically, and which are sometimes found in AI applications, is not being given sufficient attention. I argue that it should. Whether considering using or developing these meaning-focused models, there are ethical aspects. This paper offers a preliminary outline about this potentially new research field, discussing: some questions and areas of concern, (...) their significance; scenarios of ethical import, and initial ethical guidelines. A focus area, potential case study, and lens through which to see the ethical significance at hand, is ontologies, with emphasis on the most abstract ontologies (so-called generic, foundational, top-level or upper ontologies). This would aim to show the ethical import of highly abstract (often philosophical) ontological choices, assumptions, and their effects on data, developers, users, and society. In particular, I stress the need for critical examination of such models, their content, their intended meanings, assumptions, ideologies, as well as the development process. Both the ethics of, and ethics in, these activities are, therefore, of interest. Topics in the ethics of AI that are relevant include: transparency, bias, data-sharing, privacy, control over data, etc. This paper thereby contributes to the ethics of AI, as well as the ethics of information, of knowledge managment and relevant topics by developing and discussing the ethics of ontology (and similar systems). Future development will refine and add to the ideas expressed in this paper. (shrink)

One hundred years ago, Flexner emphasized the role of science in medical education. With a 21st-century perspective, the question may be posed anew: is science relevant to medical education and practice? If so, then which areas of science are fundamental to learning and making ongoing decisions in medicine? The answers to these questions should determine what is needed in the preparation of an undergraduate student for medical school.Educators and students alike question the relevance of current premedical requirements, and there is (...) concern that these in fact diminish student interest in medical or biomedical research careers. For example, premedical science courses are viewed by many students (including those who .. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWorldwide emergence of strongmen leaderships and eroded or failed democracies suggest that the era of unchallenged neoliberal hegemony may be winding down and that alternatives are rising....

An unprecedented level of confidence has recently crystallized around a new hypothesis of how living placental mammals share a pattern of common descent. The major groups are afrotheres (e.g., aardvarks, elephants), xenarthrans (e.g., anteaters, sloths), laurasiatheres (e.g., horses, shrews), and euarchontoglires (e.g., humans, rodents). Compared with previous hypotheses this tree is remarkably stable; however, some uncertainty persists about the location of the placental root, and (for example) the position of bats within laurasiatheres, of sea cows and aardvarks within afrotheres, and (...) of dermopterans within euarchontoglires. A variety of names for sub‐clades within the new placental mammal tree have been proposed, not all of which follow conventions regarding priority and stability. More importantly, the new phylogenetic framework enables the formulation of new hypotheses and testing thereof, for example regarding the possible developmental dichotomy that seems to distinguish members of the newly identified southern and northern radiations of living placental mammals. (shrink)

The phrase per remos alii (Aen. 10.290) has baffled Vergil scholars for centuries, in which regard they have all just guessed at its meaning without citing any evidence to justify their views. During the 1960s, Gilbert Highet proposed a solution to the problem after seeing a scene in a Hollywood film in which a famous actor “ran down the oars” (i. e., ran over or along or across the oars)-a solution Highet would mention in his Vergil classes but never researched (...) for publication. This article attempts to justify Highet’s suggestion by considering, beyond the cinematic and related contemporary evidence, a variety of classical, medieval, and archaeological sources of information. (shrink)

The verse hinc subitae mortes atque intestata senectus has long fuelled considerable debate and discussion among classical scholars. This hexameter occurs in the passage of the first satire that describes the aspect of the patron-client relationship where the rich patron, ignoring the plight of his poor and hungry clients, enjoys a sumptuous but deadly feast. After dining on delicacies such as boar and peacock, he bathes on a bloated stomach, causing him to die suddenly and apparently intestate, and causing those (...) angry at being deprived of their legacy to cheer at his funeral :quanta est gula quae sibi totosponit apros, animal propter conuiuia natum!poena tamen praesens, cum tu deponis amictusturgidus et crudum pauonem in balnea portas.hinc subitae mortes atque intestata senectus.it noua nec tristis per cunctas fabula cenas;ducitur iratis plaudendum funus amicis. (shrink)