Research Ethics Committees (RECs) are frequently a focus of complaints from researchers, but evidence about the operation and decisions of RECs tends to be anecdotal. We conducted a systematic study to identify and compare the ethical issues raised in 54 letters to researchers about the same 18 applications submitted to three RECs over one year. The most common type of ethical trouble identified in REC letters related to informed consent, followed by scientific design and conduct, care and protection of research (...) participants, confidentiality, recruitment and documentation. Community considerations were least frequently raised. There was evidence of variability in the ethical troubles identified and the remedies recommended. This analysis suggests that some principles may be more institutionalized than others, and offers some evidence of inconsistency between RECs. Inconsistency is often treated as evidence of incompetence and caprice, but a more sophisticated understanding of the role of RECs and their functioning is required. (shrink)

Despite increasing scientific interest in self-generated thought-mental content largely independent of the immediate environment-there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. Here, we aim to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self-generated thought-normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in sleep. In synthesizing existing literature on this topic, we reveal consistent findings pertaining to the prevalence, valence, and variability of emotion in (...) self-generated thought, and highlight how these factors might interact with self-generated thought to influence general well-being. We integrate these psychological findings with recent neuroimaging research, bringing attention to the neural correlates of affect in self-generated thought. We show that affect in self-generated thought is prevalent, positively biased, highly variable (both within and across individuals), and consistently recruits many brain areas implicated in emotional processing, including the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and medial prefrontal cortex. Many factors modulate these typical psychological and neural patterns, however; the emerging affective neuroscience of self-generated thought must endeavor to link brain function and subjective experience in both everyday self-generated thought as well as its dysfunctions in mental illness. (shrink)

The work of Sankary et al. (2022) provides valuable insights into the experiences of participants exiting brain device research. Empirical bioethics research such as this is critical to understandi...

The metaphor of 'dialogue' has been put to different descriptive and evaluative uses by constitutional and political theorists studying interactions between institutions concerning rights. It has also featured prominently in the opinions of courts and the rhetoric and deliberations of legislators. This volume brings together many of the world's leading constitutional and political theorists to debate the nature and merits of constitutional dialogues between the judicial, legislative, and executive branches. Constitutional Dialogue explores dialogue's democratic significance, examines its relevance to the (...) functioning and design of constitutional institutions, and explores constitutional dialogues from an international and transnational perspective. (shrink)

This study reexamines a lynchpin of Neo-Babylonian Levantine Phoenician historiography: Nebuchadnezzar II’s purported thirteen-year siege of Tyre in the early sixth century bce. This detail about the length of the siege can be found only in Josephus’ (first century ce) writings, but this study’s new assessment of the (sixth-fifteenth century ce) manuscript evidence shows that the more commonly transmitted length of the siege was “three years and ten months.” Other manuscript variations further illustrate that there was little continuous cultural memory (...) of the length of the event. When coupled with (a) other chronological problems in Josephus’ works, (b) a review of the complex Biblical, Mesopotamian, and Classical relevant literary sources, and (c) the lack of current evidence for any destruction levels or siegeworks at the site of Tyre, the case for insisting other sources be synchronized with this thirteen-year framework weakens. Shorter sieges or raids, blockades of the island or inland ports, and periodic Babylonian military presence to extract personnel and resources are all likely scenarios for Tyre and other Levantine sites during Nebuchadnezzar’s 43-year reign. Discarding a single “thirteen-year siege” as a reliable historical detail allows scholars of the Neo-Babylonian period in the central coastal Levant to shift their attention to more interesting questions, including exploring the causes and impacts of the evident changes in Tyre’s seaward and inland trading patterns in the sixth-fifth centuries. (shrink)

Cheating and rule violations in intercollegiate athletics continue to be relevant issues in many institutions of higher education because they reflect upon the integrity of the institutions in which they are housed, causing concern among many faculty members, administrators, and trustees. Although a great deal of research has documented the numerous rule violations in NCAA intercollegiate athletics, much of it has failed to combine sound theory with practical solutions. The purpose of this study was to examine the possible extensions of (...) the organizational justice framework to the problem of rule violations in intercollegiate athletics. In doing so, the current study examined (a) perceived areas of injustice among coaches at NCAA Division I institutions, (b) avenues by which coaches resolve these injustices, and (c) potential solutions for resolving injustices in an attempt to reduce NCAA violations. Six NCAA Division I basketball coaches from various parts of the country (four from men's teams and two from women's teams) were interviewed using a semi-structured format. Despite the NCAA's efforts to create parity, results showed that coaches perceived several areas of inequities in recruiting, including financial resources and academic standards. The interviewed coaches described several means that are currently used to resolve these inequities and offered recommendations for changes to reduce injustice in the future. (shrink)

A dual-audience signaling problem framework provides a deeper understanding of the perpetuation of group-based inequality. We describe a model of underachievement among minority youth that posits a necessary trade-off between academic success and peer social support that creates a dilemma not typically encountered by nonminorities. Preliminary evidence consistent with the approach is discussed. Such strategic agent perspectives complement the psychological approach put forth by Dixon et al., but with minimal ancillary assumptions.

Partial grounding is often thought to be formally analogous to proper parthood in certain ways. Both relations are typically understood to be asymmetric and transitive, and as such, are thought to be strict partial orders. But how far does this analogy extend? Proper parthood is often said to obey the weak supplementation principle. There is reason to wonder whether partial grounding, or, more precisely, proper partial grounding, obeys a ground-theoretic version of this principle. In what follows, I argue that it (...) does not. The cases that cause problems for the supplementation principle for grounding also serve as counterexamples to another principle, minimality, defended by Paul Audi. (shrink)

Using two decades worth of experimental philosophy (aka x-phi), Edouard Machery argues in Philosophy within its Proper Bounds (OUP, 2017) that philosophers’ use of the “method of cases” is unreliable because it has a strong tendency to elicit different intuitive responses from non-philosophers. And because, as Machery argues, appealing to such cases is usually the only way for philosophers to acquire the kind of knowledge they seek, an extensive philosophical skepticism follows. I argue that Machery’s “Unreliability” argument fails because, once (...) its premises are percisified, they are either self-defeating or without justification. This is a significant result because Machery’s arguments are the most widely cited and discussed x-phi arguments for philosophical skepticism and many hold that Machery provides the most empirically informed, convincing, and thus best case for this kind of skepticism. So, if my arguments are sound, then the best x-phi argument for philosophical skepticism fails. I further argue that this result provides strong reason to believe the more general conclusion that “negative” x-phi is likely doomed: x-phi likely can never support a substantive philosophical skepticism. Ultimately, I argue for the broad conclusion that all empirically minded arguments for philosophical skepticism are likely to fail for the same reasons that Machery’s does, i.e. they are (likely) self-defeating. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper [1] is a defence of a modified version of Jane English's model of filial obligations based on adult children's friendship with their parents. Unlike the more traditional view that filial obligations are a repayment for parental sacrifices, the friendship model puts filial duties in the appealing context of voluntary, loving relationships. Contrary to English's original statement of this view, which is open to the charge of tolerating filial ingratitude, the friendship model can generate obligations to help our (...) parents even if we are no longer friendly with them. Joseph Kupfer has pointed out several ways in which parent‐child relationships differ from peer friendships; but his arguments do not preclude our enjoying a type of friendship with our parents. In response to Christina Hoff Sommers, who objects that feelings of friendship toward our parents are too flimsy a ground for filial duties, the friendship model can provide a plausible, robust account of filial obligations. As for adult children who have never formed friendships with their loving, caring parents, and refuse to give them much‐needed assistance, they can be criticised by moral considerations independent of but compatible with the friendship model. (shrink)

PREFACE I AM greatly indebted to my friends, Professor Dewar of Reading and Miss Maude G. May of Glasgow, for many corrections and suggestions while the following pages were passing through the press. W. M. D. PART I I INTRODUCTION Y. D.H.S. The most singular and deepest themes in the History of the Universe and Mankind, to which all the rest are subordinate, are those in which there is a conflict between Belief and Unbelief, and all epochs, wherein Belief prevails, (...) under, what form it will, are splendid, heart-elevating and fruitful. (shrink)

De Interpretatione is among Aristotle's most influential and widely read writings; C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system. He shows that De Interpretatione is not a disjointed essay on ill-connected subjects, as traditionally thought, but a highly organized and systematic treatise on logic, argument, and dialectic.

Discusses a number of pressing social issues, including nuclear weapons, radiation in the food supply, technological disasters, cancer, and other diseases traced to toxic chemicals in the air and water.

Although there has been critical analysis of how the informed consent process functions in relation to participation in research and particular ethical 'dilemmas', there has been little examination of consenting to more routine medical procedures. We report a qualitative study of 25 women who consented to surgery. Of these, nine were ambivalent or opposed to having an operation. When faced with a consent form, women's accounts suggest that they rarely do anything other than obey professionals' requests for a signature. An (...) interactionist analysis suggests that women's capacity to act is reduced by the hospital structure of tacit, socially-imposed rules of conduct. Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and symbolic power/violence show how the practical logic that women apply confers a 'sense of place' relative to professionals. Women experience deficits in capital that constrain their ability to exercise choice. This work demonstrates the weakness of the consent process as a safeguard of autonomy. (shrink)

Comparison of similarities between women and animals does not necessarily show that animals are oppressed, much less that they are oppressed by patriarchy. Moreover, by seeking to establish symbolic connections, ecofeminists run the risk of essentializing women as emotional and bodily and closer to nature than men. Feminists have little to gain by concentrating exclusively on how the concepts of woman and animal overlap. Likewise, there is little to be gained for animal liberation by comparing women and animals in theory (...) and practice. Feminists have obligations to liberate animals to the degree that they have obligations to liberate any oppressed population, but not because there are either theoretical, practical, or symbolic connections between women and animals. (shrink)

This paper identifies and examines the possible contributions that emerging fields of study, particularly feminist public health, can make to enhancing and expanding trans/feminist theory and practice. A feminist public-health approach that is rooted in a tradition of political economy, social justice and equity studies, and an anti-oppression orientation, provides one of the most comprehensive "toolboxes" of perspectives, theoretical frameworks, methods, practices, processes, and strategies for trans-oriented scholars and activists.

Thomas Brown (1778-1820) is the third member, after Thomas Reid and Dugald Steward, traditionally associated with the Scottish School of Common Sense. This collection makes this major thinker's work available in a modern scholarly edition.

Virtual Futures explores the ideas that the future lies in its ability to articulate the consequences of an increasingly synthetic and virtual world. New technologies like cyberspace, the internet, and Chaos theory are often discussed in the context of technology and its potential to liberate or in terms of technophobia. This collection examines both these ideas while also charting a new and controversial route through contemporary discourses on technology; a path that discusses the material evolution and the erotic relation between (...) humans and machines. Virtual Futures brings together diverse fields such as cyberfeminism, materialist philosophy, postmodern fiction, computing culture and performance art, with essays by Sadie Plant, Stelarc and Manuel de Landa (to name a few). The collection heralds the death of humanism and the ride of posthuman pragmatism. The contested zone of debate throughout these essays is the notion of the posthuman, or the possibility of the cyborg as the free human. Viewed by some writers as a threat to human life and humanism itself, others in the collection describe the posthuman as a critical perspective that anticipates the next step in evolution: the integration or synthesis of humans and machines, organic life and technology. This view of technology and information is heavily influenced by Anglo American literature, especially cyberpunk, Pynchon and Ballard, as well as the materialist philosophies of Freud, Deleuze, and Haraway, Virtual Futures provides analyses by both established theorists and the most innovative new voices working in conjunction between the arts and contemporary technology. (shrink)

_Virtual Futures_ explores the ideas that the future lies in its ability to articulate the consequences of an increasingly synthetic and virtual world. New technologies like cyberspace, the internet, and Chaos theory are often discussed in the context of technology and its potential to liberate or in terms of technophobia. This collection examines both these ideas while also charting a new and controversial route through contemporary discourses on technology; a path that discusses the material evolution and the erotic relation between (...) humans and machines. _Virtual Futures_ brings together diverse fields such as cyberfeminism, materialist philosophy, postmodern fiction, computing culture and performance art, with essays by Sadie Plant, Stelarc and Manuel de Landa. The collection heralds the death of humanism and the ride of posthuman pragmatism. The contested zone of debate throughout these essays is the notion of the posthuman, or the possibility of the cyborg as the free human. Viewed by some writers as a threat to human life and humanism itself, others in the collection describe the posthuman as a critical perspective that anticipates the next step in evolution: the integration or synthesis of humans and machines, organic life and technology. This view of technology and information is heavily influenced by Anglo American literature, especially cyberpunk, Pynchon and Ballard, as well as the materialist philosophies of Freud, Deleuze, and Haraway, _Virtual Futures_ provides analyses by both established theorists and the most innovative new voices working in conjunction between the arts and contemporary technology. (shrink)

Socrates, Sports, and Students involves a philosophical justification for the inclusion of physical education in the school system. This book will appeal to physical educators and administrators interested in justifying their activity, as well as philosophers and professors in the areas of education and sport.