ABSTRACT: Recently the discussion surrounding the conceivability thesis has been less about the link between conceivability and possibility per se and more about the requirements of a successful physicalist program. But before entering this debate it is necessary to consider whether conceivability provides us with even prima facie justification for our modal beliefs. I argue that two methods of conceiving—imagining that p and telling a story about p—can provide us with such justification, but only if certain requirements are met. To (...) make these arguments, I consider those of Paul Tidman, whose position I use as a foil.RÉSUMÉ: Dernièrement, le débat sur la thèse de la concevabilité a peu porté sur le lien entre la concevabilité et la possibilité per se et s’est plutôt intéressé aux conditions requises pour la réalisation du programme physicaliste. Toutefois, avant d’entrer dans ce débat, il est nécessaire de se demander si la concevabilité offre une justification même élémentaire des croyances modales. Je soutiens que deux méthodesde concevoir — imaginer que p et raconter une histoire à propos de p — sont susceptibles de nous fournir cette justification, mais seulement dans la limite de certaines conditions. À l’appui de mon propos, j’envisage la position de Paul Tidman, qui me sert de repoussoir. (shrink)

We can safely infer that a proposition is possible if p is the case. But, I argue, this inference from the actual to the possible is merely explicative in nature, though we employ it at times as if it were ampliative. To make this inference ampliative, we need to include an inference to the best explanation. Specifically, we can draw a substantive conclusion as to whether p is possible from the fact that p is the case, if via our best (...) explanation we can explain how p could occur again in the complete and coherent set of propositions that describes the actual world. (shrink)

David Chalmers supports his contention that there is a possible world populated by our zombie twins by arguing for the assumption that conceivability entails possibility. But, I argue, the modal epistemology he sets forth, ‘modal rationalism,’ ignores the problem of incompleteness and relies on an idealized notion of conceivability. As a consequence, this epistemology can’t justify our quotidian judgments of possibility, let alone those judgments that concern the mind/body connection. Working from the analogy that the imagination is to the possible (...) as perception is to the actual, I set forth a competing epistemology, ‘modal empiricism.’ This epistemology survives the incompleteness objection and allows some of our everyday modal judgments to be justified. But this epistemology can’t justify the claim that Zombie World is possible, which leaves Chalmers’s property dualism without the support it needs. (shrink)

Feminism is an antiauthoritarian movement that has sought to unmask many traditional “authorities” as ungrounded. Given this, it might seem as if feminists are required to abandon the concept of authority altogether. But, we argue, the exercise of authority enables us to coordinate our efforts to achieve larger social goods and, hence, should be preserved. Instead, what is needed and what we provide for here is a way to distinguish legitimate authority from objectionable authoritarianism.

Feminism is an antiauthoritarian movement that has sought to unmask many traditional “authorities” as ungrounded. Given this, it might seem as if feminists are required to abandon the concept of authority altogether. But, we argue, the exercise of authority enables us to coordinate our efforts to achieve larger social goods and, hence, should be preserved. Instead, what is needed and what we provide for here is a way to distinguish legitimate authority from objectionable authoritarianism.

Consider the claim: Our actions are free if and only if we could have done otherwise; or the claim, We are essentially mental substances because we can exist without our bodies. Both of these claims, along with countless others, employ a notion of possibility. If this notion is to have a place in philosophy, we must be able to justify our modal claims. We need an epistemology of possibility. It is often assumed that the imagination is the key here. The (...) assumption is this; if I can imagine that a proposition is the case, then p is possible. Suppose I am wondering whether Kant Critique could float above my desk; if I can imagine this book floating, then it is possible. But is the imagination a guide to the modal status of propositions? ;To answer this question we must first consider what it is to imagine a proposition. We can distinguish five main methods of imagining: to imagine is to form a mental image, to evoke experiences, to suppose, to pretend, or it is to tell a story. Can any of these methods provide us with a guide to possibility? I contend that only the last two methods are up to this task insofar as they provide us with evidence of p's modal status. Moreover, how good that evidence is depends on our ability to satisfy the requirements of completeness, coherence, and accuracy. Finally, I argue that we will have the best evidence for the possibility of p, if we combine these two methods. For by combining our evoked experiences with a story, we will generate experiences of p, the best possible explanation of a world in which p is true, and an account of p's truth that complements this explanation. Thus, given explanationist standards, we will have what we need to be justified in concluding that p is possible. (shrink)

Is a woman ever morally obligated to forgo an abortion for the sake of the man who has impregnated her? In “Fathers and Fetuses,” George Harris contends that in some situations women are so obligated. Harris argues that a woman who lies to her partner about her desire to have children, becomes pregnant, and then decides to abort, will, if she acts on this decision, violate her partner’s autonomy and harm him in so far as she will harm his fetus. (...) To avoid these wrongs, a woman must therefore carry this fetus to term. I argue that this conclusion depends on a principle for which Harris offers no argument, namely that the conditions under which a fetus is to be considered a man’s are the same conditions under which a fetus is to be considered a woman’s. Evaluating this principle andconsidering related cases leads to important conclusions about a parent’s relationship with the fetus. Specifically, I challenge the notion that we should ever consider a fetus ‘his’ or even ‘hers.’. (shrink)

Burgess-Jackson argues that the duties we have to our companion animals are similar to the duties we have to our children. Specifically, he argues that a person who takes custody of either a nonhuman animal or a child elevates the moral status of the child or animal, endowing each with rights neither had before. These rights obligate that person to provide for the well being of the creature—animal or child—in question. This paper offers two arguments against this position. First, a (...) creature's rights rest solely on the creature's intrinsic properties. Thus, the person taking custody of a creature does not endow the creature with new rights. Rather, the custodian assumes the responsibilities associated with ensuring that the creature's rights are protected and preserved. Second, our children possess intrinsic properties and, hence, rights—most important, the right to life—that our pets lack. This difference undermines the analogy on which Burgess-Jackson's argument depends. Our pets are not like our children, as Burgess-Jackson claims. Instead, they are more akin to our slaves. (shrink)

Some hold that if we can imagine God creating a world in which a particular proposition (p) is true, then we can conclude that p is possible. I argue that such appeals to God can’t provide us with a guide to possibility. For either God’s powers aren’t co-extensive with the possible or they are. And if they are, these appeals either beg the question or court a version of Euthyphro’s Dilemma. Some may argue that such appeals were only intended to (...) prompt us to think broadly about the modal claim at issue. I argue instead that these appeals must be understood as more than mere prompts. For it is these appeals that would, if successful, render the conceivability principle viable. (shrink)

In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, leading figures in the fields of virtue ethics and ethics come together to present the first ...

Over the course of its history, feminist standpoint theory has encountered a number of problems which reveal divisions among its supporters over certain fundamental philosophical commitments. This chapter sketches a phenomenological account of perception that can begin to address these problems, drawn largely from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Merleau-Ponty can help us resolve these issues by providing an account of perspectival perception wherein a multiplicity of different perceptual standpoints all nonetheless put us in touch with a single external world, (...) and in which some standpoints may be better than others when it comes to accessing certain features of this world. For Merleau-Ponty, the proliferation of standpoints need not lead us into an unacceptably relativistic framework, as long as we are able to conceive of each of these standpoints as giving whoever occupies it access to some particular aspect of a singular, real, shared world. (shrink)

I explore how gender can shape the pragmatics of speech. In some circumstances, when a woman deploys standard discursive conventions in order to produce a speech act with a specific performative force, her utterance can turn out, in virtue of its uptake, to have a quite different force—a less empowering force—than it would have if performed by a man. When members of a disadvantaged group face a systematic inability to produce a specific kind of speech act that they are entitled (...) to perform—and in particular when their attempts result in their actually producing a different kind of speech act that further compromises their social position and agency—then they are victims of what I call discursive injustice. I examine three examples of discursive injustice. I contrast my account with Langton and Hornsby's account of illocutionary silencing. I argue that lack of complete control over the performative force of our speech acts is universal, and not a special marker of social disadvantage. However, women and other relatively disempowered speakers are sometimes subject to a distinctive distortion of the path from speaking to uptake, which undercuts their social agency in ways that track and enhance existing social disadvantages. (shrink)

This chapter explores two kinds of testimonial trust, what we call ‘evidential trust’ and ‘non-evidential trust’ with the aim of asking how testimonial trust could provide epistemic reasons for belief. We argue that neither evidential nor non-evidential trust can play a distinctive role in providing evidential reasons for belief, but we tentatively propose that non-evidential trust can in some circumstances provide a novel kind of epistemic reason for belief, a reason of epistemic facilitation. The chapter begins with an extensive discussion (...) of standard accounts of both kinds of trust and criticises especially the standard accounts of non-evidential trust. A new account of non-evidential trust is offered that avoids a number of difficulties that plague the standard accounts by rejecting what we call ‘attitude-liability assumptions’. (shrink)

The girl under the age of 16 is said to have been left distraught after her avatar - her digital character - was gang raped by the online strangers.

Abstract:I raise several concerns with Earp and colleagues' analysis of enhancement through neurochemical modulation of love as a key issue in contemporary neuroethics. These include: (i) strengthening their deflation of medicalization concerns by showing how the objection that love should be left outside of the scope of medicine would directly undermine the goal of medicine; (ii) developing stronger analysis of the social and political concerns relevant to neurochemical modulation of love, by exploring and suggesting possible counters to ways in which (...) 'wellbeing' may be used as a tool of oppression; (iii) providing reasons to support a broad need for ecological investigation of, and indeed ecological education concerning, neurotechnology; (iv) suggesting ways in which philosophy, and the humanities more broadly, remain directly relevant to responding effectively to issues in contemporary neuroethics. (shrink)

Purpose: We sought to examine the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) literature research and scholarship types, topics, and contributing community fields of training as a first step to charting the broader ELSI community’s future priorities and goals. Methods: We categorized 642 articles and book chapters meeting inclusion criteria for content in both human genetics or genomics and ethics or ELSI during a 5-year period (2003–2008) according to research and scholarship types, topics, and the area of advanced training of the (...) first-listed author. Research and scholarship type categories were developed and characterized through in-depth review of 95 randomly sampled publications from the larger group. Results: There is a single dominant approach to ELSI, which focuses on ethical and other social issues “downstream” of advances in genomics, the contributors to which predominately have advanced training in medicine or science fields other than social science. A comparatively low percentage of publications primarily offer policy recommendations, and these are much more likely to be written by those with advanced training in law than is the case for the literature as a whole. Social science studies predominately employ qualitative methods and vary significantly with respect to the extent and types of recommendations offered. Two further types of ELSI research and scholarship offer alternative models for so-called “normative” work in this field. Conclusion: Considering topics, training, and types of ELSI research and scholarship from the most recent past allows for a baseline perspective that is sorely needed in charting this field’s future course. (shrink)

Human Rights Education (HRE) has traditionally been articulated in terms of cultivating better citizens or world citizens. The main preoccupation in this strand of HRE has been that of bridging a gap between universal notions of a human rights subject and the actual locality and particular narratives in which students are enmeshed. This preoccupation has focused on ‘learning about the other’ in order to improve relations between plural ‘others’ and ‘us’ and reflects educational aims of national identity politics in citizenship (...) education. The article explores the learning of human rights through narratives in relations, drawing on Hannah Arendt and Sharon Todd. For this re-thinking of relations in learning human rights, the article argues that HRE needs to address both competing historical narratives on the drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) as well as unique life narratives of learners. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker claims that a “gap” in collective hermeneutical resources with respect to the social experiences of marginalized groups prevents members of those groups from understanding their own experiences (Fricker 2007). I argue that because Fricker misdescribes dominant hermeneutical resources as collective, she fails to locate the ethically bad epistemic practices that maintain gaps in dominant hermeneutical resources even while alternative interpretations are in fact offered by non-dominant discourses. Fricker's analysis of hermeneutical injustice does not account for the possibility that (...) marginalized groups can be silenced relative to dominant discourses without being prevented from understanding or expressing their own social experiences. I suggest that a gap in dominant hermeneutical resources is ambiguous between two kinds of unknowing: hermeneutical injustice suffered by members of marginalized groups, and epistemically and ethically blameworthy ignorance perpetrated by members of dominant groups. (shrink)

Controversial and provocative, To Be Real is a blueprint for the creation of a new political force.

Evolution was not discovered single-handedly, Rebecca Stott argues, contrary to what has become standard lore, but is an idea that emerged over many centuries, advanced by daring individuals across the globe who had the imagination to speculate on nature's extraordinary ways, and who had the courage to articulate such speculations at a time when to do so was often considered heresy.

Phase 1 healthy volunteer clinical trials—which financially compensate subjects in tests of drug toxicity levels and side effects—appear to place pressure on each joint of the moral framework justifying research. In this article, we review concerns about phase 1 trials as they have been framed in the bioethics literature, including undue inducement and coercion, unjust exploitation, and worries about compromised data validity. We then revisit these concerns in light of the lived experiences of serial participants who are income-dependent on phase (...) 1 trials. We show how participant experiences shift attention from discrete exchanges, behaviors, and events in the research enterprise to the ongoing and dynamic patterns of serial participation in which individual decision-making is embedded in collective social and economic conditions and shaped by institutional policies. We argue in particular for the ethical significance of structurally diminished voluntariness, routine powerlessness in setting the terms of exchange, and incentive structures that may promote pharmaceutical interests but encourage phase 1 healthy volunteers to skirt important rules. (shrink)

Prominent mathematician William Thurston was praised by other mathematicians for his intellectual generosity. But what does it mean to say Thurston was intellectually generous? And is being intellectually generous beneficial? To answer these questions I turn to virtue epistemology and, in particular, Roberts and Wood's (2007) analysis of intellectual generosity. By appealing to Thurston's own writings and interviewing mathematicians who knew and worked with him, I argue that Roberts and Wood's analysis nicely captures the sense in which he was intellectually (...) generous. I then argue that intellectual generosity is beneficial because it counteracts negative effects of the reward structure of mathematics that can stymie mathematical progress. (shrink)

We routinely need to process the identity of many faces around us, and how the brain achieves this is still the subject of much research in cognitive neuroscience. To date, insights on face identity processing have come from both healthy and clinical populations. However, in order to directly compare results across and within participant groups, and across different studies, it is crucial that a standard task is utilised which includes different exemplars (for example, non-face stimuli along with faces), is memory-neutral, (...) and taps into identity recognition across orientation and across viewpoint change. The goal of this study was to test a previously behaviourally tested, optimised face and object identity matching design in a healthy control sample whilst being scanned using fMRI. Specifically, we investigated categorical, orientation, and category-specific orientation effects while participants were focused on identity processing of simultaneously presented exemplar stimuli. Alongside observing category and orientation specific effects in a distributed set of brain regions, we also saw an interaction between stimulus category and orientation in the bilateral fusiform gyrus and bilateral middle occipital gyrus. Generally these clusters showed the pattern of a heightened response to inverted, as opposed to upright faces; and to upright, as opposed to inverted shoes. These results are discussed in relation to previous studies and to potential future research within prosopagnosic individuals. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has led a number of countries to introduce restrictive ‘lockdown’ policies on their citizens in order to control infection spread. Immunity passports have been proposed as a way of easing the harms of such policies, and could be used in conjunction with other strategies for infection control. These passports would permit those who test positive for COVID-19 antibodies to return to some of their normal behaviours, such as travelling more freely and returning to work. The introduction of (...) immunity passports raises a number of practical and ethical challenges. In this paper, we seek to review the challenges relating to various practical considerations, fairness issues, the risk to social cooperation and the impact on people’s civil liberties. We make tentative recommendations for the ethical introduction of immunity passports. (shrink)

It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have given pride of place (...) to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

Human beings with diminished decision-making capacities are usually thought to require greater protections from the potential harms of research than fully autonomous persons. Animal subjects of research receive lesser protections than any human beings regardless of decision-making capacity. Paradoxically, however, it is precisely animals’ lack of some characteristic human capacities that is commonly invoked to justify using them for human purposes. In other words, for humans lesser capacities correspond to greater protections but for animals the opposite is true. Without explicit (...) justification, it is not clear why or whether this should be the case. Ethics regulations guiding human subject research include principles such as respect for persons—and related duties—that are required as a matter of justice while regulations guiding animal subject research attend only to highly circumscribed considerations of welfare. Further, the regulations guiding research on animals discount any consideration of animal welfare relative to comparable human welfare. This paper explores two of the most promising justifications for these differences␣between the two sets of regulations. The first potential justification points to lesser moral status for animals on the basis of their lesser capacities. The second potential justification relies on a claim about the permissibility of moral partiality as␣found in common morality. While neither potential justification is sufficient to justify the regulatory difference as it stands, there is possible common ground between supporters of some regulatory difference and those rejecting the current difference. (shrink)

Mothers serve as an important layer of the health-care system, with special responsi-bilities to care for the health of families and nations. In our social discourse, we tend to treat maternal “choices” as though they were morally and causally Self-contained units of influence with primary control over children's health. In this essay, I use infant feeding as a lens for examining the ethical contours of mothers’ caretaking practices and responsibilities, as they are situated within cultural meanings and institutional pressures. I (...) give a close critical reading of the content and strategy of the new breastfeeding advocacy campaign sponsored by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. I argue that the campaign is unlikely to substantially increase breastfeeding rates, unresponsive and even hostile to many women's actual concerns about breastfeeding, and well positioned to produce shame and compromise agency among the women it targets. (shrink)

: The standard bioethics account is that respecting patient autonomy means ensuring patients make their own decisions. In fact, respecting patient autonomy often has more to do with the overall shape and meaning of patients' health care regimes, and sometimes, at least, patients will very reasonably defer to medical authority.

In 1837, Dirichlet proved that there are infinitely many primes in any arithmetic progression in which the terms do not all share a common factor. Modern presentations of the proof are explicitly higher-order, in that they involve quantifying over and summing over Dirichlet characters, which are certain types of functions. The notion of a character is only implicit in Dirichlet’s original proof, and the subsequent history shows a very gradual transition to the modern mode of presentation. In this essay, we (...) describe an approach to the philosophy of mathematics in which it is an important task to understand the roles of our ontological posits and assess the extent to which they enable us to achieve our mathematical goals. We use the history of Dirichlet’s theorem to understand some of the reasons that functions are treated as ordinary objects in contemporary mathematics, as well as some of the reasons one might want to resist such treatment. We also use these considerations to illuminate the formal treatment of functions and objects in Frege’s logical foundation, and we argue that his philosophical and logical decisions were influenced by many of the same factors. (shrink)

Traditionally, social entities (i.e., social properties, facts, kinds, groups, institutions, and structures) have not fallen within the purview of mainstream metaphysics. In this chapter, we consider whether the exclusion of social entities from mainstream metaphysics is philosophically warranted or if it instead rests on historical accident or bias. We examine three ways one might attempt to justify excluding social metaphysics from the domain of metaphysical inquiry and argue that each fails. Thus, we conclude that social entities are not justifiably excluded (...) from metaphysical inquiry. Finally, we ask how focusing on social entities could change the character of metaphysical inquiry. We suggest that starting from examples of social entities might lead metaphysicians to rethink the assumption that describing reality in terms of intrinsic, independent, and individualistic features is preferable to describing it in terms of relational, dependent, and non-individualistic features. (shrink)

The standard bioethics account is that respecting patient autonomy means ensuring that patients make their own decisions, and that requires that they give informed consent. In fact, respecting autonomy often has more to do with the overall shape and meaning of their health care regimes. Ideally, patients will sometimes take control of their health care but sometimes defer to medical authority. The physician's task is, in part, to inculcate patients into the appropriate good health care regimes.

Mr. C is a twenty‐two‐year‐old who was flown to a level‐1 trauma center after diving headfirst into shallow water. Prior to this accident, he was in excellent health. At the scene, he had been conscious but was paralyzed and had no sensation below his neck. The emergency medical services team immobilized Mr. C's neck with a cervical collar and intubated him for airway protection before transport. As Mr. C's medical care proceeds, he expresses a desire for extubation, although it was (...) not clear that he had the capacity to make this (or any other) decision. It also was unclear whether this desire reflected his authentic wishes to be allowed to die or stemmed from feelings of discomfort and agitation. Over a period of several days, Mr. C's sedation was lightened, and the psychiatry service conducted a formal decision‐making capacity assessment. Mr. C continues to express a desire to withdraw life‐sustaining medical treatment. However, the psychiatry service is concerned that Mr. C seems to lack adequate insight into what it would mean to die.What does it mean to respect Mr. C's autonomy? (shrink)

I defend a novel view of how social kinds (e.g., money, women, permanent residents) depend on our mental states. In particular, I argue that social kinds depend on our mental states in the following sense: it is essential to them that they exist (partially) because certain mental states exist. This analysis is meant to capture the very general way in which all social kinds depend on our mental states. However, my view is that particular social kinds also depend on our (...) mental states in more specific ways—some of them causal, others metaphysical. I defend a minimal but metaphysically important notion of essence—one that takes as primary that the essential properties of a kind constitute its identity—and argue that this minimal notion of essence is all that is needed to vindicate my claim that social kinds are essentially mind-dependent. (shrink)

The term “therapeutic misconception” was coined in 1982 by Paul Appelbaum, Loren Roth, and Charles Lidz. Appelbaum and his colleagues interviewed participants in several psychiatric studies, including a drug trial with a placebo control arm. Appelbaum's group found that many people were unaware of the differences between participating in a study and receiving treatment in the clinical setting. Rather than understanding these differences, study participants tended to believe that therapy and research were governed by the same primary goal: to advance (...) the individual patient's best interests. Appelbaum's group labeled this mistaken belief the therapeutic misconception. (shrink)

1 Some philosophers defend the thesis that women are adult human females. Call this the adult human female thesis (AHF). There are two versions of this thesis—one modal and one definitional. Accord...

In this article, we explore the role of film in educational settings and argue that testimony and narrative are dependent upon each other for developing ethical judgments. We use the film 12 Angry Men to enhance our thesis that the emotional response that sometimes is intended in using film as testimonies in classrooms requires a specific listening; a listening that puts pupils at risk when they relate testimonies to their own life narratives. The article raises the importance of listening in (...) training narrative ethos in relation to violence witnessed in film. The article contributes by enhancing an understanding of a relational dimension to testimony and narrative, which, in an Arendtian sense, is also put forward as a political relation. (shrink)

The view that social kinds (e.g., money, migrant, marriage) are mind-dependent is a prominent one in the social ontology literature. However, in addition to the claim that social kinds are mind-dependent, it is often asserted that social kinds are not real because they are mind-dependent. Call this view social kind anti-realism. To defend their view, social kind anti-realists must accomplish two tasks. First, they must identify a dependence relation that obtains between social kinds and our mental states. Call this the (...) Dependence Task. Second, they must show that social kinds are not real because they are mind-dependent. Call this the Anti-Realist Task. In this paper, I consider several different ways of defining the relation that is supposed to obtain between social kinds and our mental states. With respect to each relation, I argue that either it fails to accomplish the Dependence Task, or it fails to accomplish the Anti-Realist Task. As such, anyone who wishes to defend social kind anti-realism must provide an alternative explanation of how social kinds depend on our mental states in a way that impugns their reality. In the absence of such an explanation, there is no reason to endorse social kind anti-realism. (shrink)

I develop and defend the following neo-Aristotelian account of supererogation: an action is supererogatory if and only if it is overall virtuous and either the omission of an overall virtuous action in that situation would not be overall vicious or there is some overall virtuous action that is less virtuous than it and whose performance in its place would not be overall vicious. I develop this account from within the virtue-ethical tradition. And I argue that it is intuitively defensible and (...) fully compatible with the doctrine of the mean. (shrink)

The principle of informed consent obligates physicians to explain possible side effects when prescribing medications. This disclosure may itself induce adverse effects through expectancy mechanisms known as nocebo effects, contradicting the principle of nonmaleficence. Rigorous research suggests that providing patients with a detailed enumeration of every possible adverse event—especially subjective self-appraised symptoms—can actually increase side effects. Describing one version of what might happen (clinical “facts”) may actually create outcomes that are different from what would have happened without this information (another (...) version of “facts”). This essay argues that the perceived tension between balancing informed consent with nonmaleficence might be resolved by recognizing that adverse effects have no clear black or white “truth.” This essay suggests a pragmatic approach for providers to minimize nocebo responses while still maintaining patient autonomy through “contextualized informed consent,” which takes into account possible side effects, the patient being treated, and the particular diagnosis involved. (shrink)