A century after his landmark report Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910), Abraham Flexner remains an icon in the history of American medical education. Working for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, he visited each of the 155 medical schools then in existence in the United States and Canada, after which he published a blistering, muckraking report. This report helped bring about the destruction of the proprietary medical school, put forth the Johns Hopkins School of (...) Medicine as the ideal of what a medical school should look like, and established Flexner as the unchallenged arbiter of educational reform in American medicine. Two years after the report, he became assistant .. (shrink)

We suggest that there is confusion between why consciousness developed and what additional functions, through continued evolution, it has co-opted. Consider episodic memory. If we believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent past events, it seems like a terrible system—prone to forgetting and false memories. However, if we believe that episodic memory developed to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good system. We (...) argue that consciousness originally developed as part of the episodic memory system—quite likely the part needed to accomplish that flexible recombining of information. We posit further that consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language. We suggest that this theory is compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by other theories. We believe that our theory may have profound implications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in general. Moreover, we suggest that episodic memory and its associated memory systems of sensory, working, and semantic memory as a whole ought to be considered together as the conscious memory system in that they, together, give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness. Lastly, we suggest that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that makes consciousness possible, and that every cortical region contributes to this conscious memory system. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Cognition as Information Processing, as Computation, and as Abiding in the Meaningful Operationalism Is This Merely a Terminological Issue? Conclusion.

In _Charles Peirce and Modern Science_, T.L. Short encourages us to read Peirce’s oeuvre in the spirit of philosophical experimentalism. The result is a rewarding and refreshing book that clarifies longstanding controversies and stakes out novel positions in the debates. In these comments, I subject Short’s statements regarding the validity of induction to critical scrutiny. I argue that while much of what he states is correct, he errs in holding that induction is invalid in the short run of an individual’s (...) life. (shrink)

Obviously perception is embodied. After all, if creatures were entirely disembodied, how could physical processes in the environment, such as the propagation of light or sound, be transduced into a neurobiological currency capable of generating experience? Is there, however, any deeper, more subtle sense in which perception is embodied? Perhaps. Alva Noë’s theory of en- active perception provides one proposal. Noë suggests a radical constitutive hypothesis according to which (COH) Perceptual experiences are constituted, in part, by the exercise of sensorimotor (...) skills. -/- On Noé's view, bodily processes form a constitutive element in per- ceptual experiences. By contrast, it is more commonly supposed that bodily processes have at most a causal role to play in the genesis of perceptual experiences. Roughly stated, (CAI-l} Perceptual experiences are caused, in part, by the exercise of sensorimotor skills. -/- Clearly these two hypotheses offer distinct conceptions of the embodiment of perception. One view maintains that there is a con- stitutive dependency between bodily processes and perceptual expe- riences, where the other maintains that there is a causal dependency. This paper will make the case that Noe fails to offer any evidence that. supports (COH) over (CAH) and that there is experimental evidence that favours (CAH) over (COH).E . (shrink)

Among the many ideas that go by the name of “enactivism” there is the idea that by “cognition” we should understand what is more commonly taken to be behavior. For clarity, label such forms of enactivism “enactivismb.” This terminology requires some care in evaluating enactivistb claims. There is a genuine risk of enactivist and non-enactivist cognitive scientists talking past one another. So, for example, when enactivistsb write that “cognition does not require representations” they are not necessarily denying what cognitivists claim (...) when they write that “cognition requires representations.” This paper will draw attention to instances of some of these unnecessary confusions. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic swept through New York City swiftly and with devastating effect. The crisis put enormous pressure on all hospital services, including the clinical ethics consultation team. This report describes the recent experience of the ethics consultants and Columbia University Irving Medical Center during the COVID-19 surge and compares the case load and characteristics to the corresponding period in 2019. By reporting this experience, we hope to supplement the growing body of COVID-19 scientific literature and provide details of the (...) human toll the virus took on our hospitals and communities. We also aim to highlight the role of the clinical ethics consultant as well as areas of policy and law that may need to be addressed in order to be better prepared for a future public health crisis. (shrink)

In the New Mechanist literature, most attention has focused on the compositional explanation of processes/activities of wholes by processes/activities of their parts. These are sometimes called “constitutive mechanistic explanations.” In this paper, we defend moving beyond this focus to a Pluralism about compositional explanation by highlighting two additional species of such explanations. We illuminate both Analytic compositional explanations that explain a whole using a compositional relation to its parts, and also Standing compositional explanations that explain a property of a whole (...) using a compositional relation to the properties of its parts. We also highlight how adopting a Pluralism about compositional explanations justifies a more Pluralist view of the ontological posits of such explanations and opens up a range of new research questions. (shrink)

One might have thought that if something has two or more distinct realizations, then that thing is multiply realized. Nevertheless, some philosophers have claimed that two or more distinct realizations do not amount to multiple realization, unless those distinct realizations amount to multiple “ways” of realizing the thing. Corey Maley, Gualtiero Piccinini, Thomas Polger, and Lawrence Shapiro are among these philosophers. Unfortunately, they do not explain why multiple realization requires multiple “ways” of realizing. More significantly, their efforts to articulate multiple (...) “ways” of realizing turn out to be problematic. (shrink)

Above all other titles, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) prized that of logician. He thought of logic broadly, such that it includes not merely formal logic but an examination of the entire process of inquiry. His works are replete with detailed investigations into logical questions. Peirce is especially concerned to show that valid inferential processes, diligently followed, will eventually root out error and alight on the truth. Peirce on Inference draws together diverse strands from Peirce's lifelong reflections on logic in order (...) to develop a comprehensive perspective on Peirce's theory of inference. -/- Peirce argues that each genus of inference--deduction, induction, and abduction--has a different truth-producing virtue. An inference is valid just in case the procedure used in fact has the truth-producing virtue claimed for it and the person making the inference adheres to the procedure. In successive chapters, this book shows how Peirce supports the thesis that these genera of inference have the truth-producing virtues claimed for them and how Peirce responds to objections. Among the objections given consideration are the liar paradox, Hume's problem of induction, Goodman's new riddle of induction, that this may be a chance world, and that we are incapable of conceiving the true hypothesis. The book defends several controversial theses, including that Peirce does not so strongly object to Bayesianism as is sometimes claimed and that prior to 1900 Peirce had no explicit theory of abduction. It also proposes a novel account of abduction. (shrink)

Within the philosophy of sport, the phenomenon of practising has received very little attention, whereas other related aspects of sport such as excellence and competition have been subjected to many and thorough studies. This essay will attempt to clarify this particular phenomenon of practising through the notion of athletic ascetics, which will be analysed as a special variant of askēsis. Drawing especially on Foucault’s lectures on ascetics in ancient philosophy and Sloterdijk’s anthropology of the practising life, the essay outlines and (...) interrogates the potential relevance of an ascetological understanding of sport. Through both descriptive and normative analysis, it is argued that athletic ascetics can refine our understanding of performance in sport and comprise an embodied account of the formative aspect of ethics, with implications for ethical considerations related to performance enhancement. (shrink)

This paper explores the interpretation and use of polygenic risk scores (PRSs). We argue that PRSs generally do not directly embody causal information. Nonetheless, they can assist us in tracking other causal relationships concerning genetic effects. Although their purely predictive/correlational use is important, it is this tracking feature that contributes to their potential usefulness in other applications, such as genetic dissection, and their use as controls, which allow us, indirectly, to "see" more clearly the role of environmental variables.

Despite the considerable attention that the systematicity argument has enjoyed, it is worthwhile examining the argument within the context of similar explanatory arguments from the history of science. This kind of analysis helps show that Connectionism, qua Connectionism, really does not have an explanation of systematicity. Second, and more surprisingly, one finds that the systematicity argument sets such a high explanatory standard that not even Classicism can explain the systematicity of thought.

The extant literature on comparative Corporate Social Responsibility often assumes functioning and enabling institutional arrangements, such as strong government, market and civil society, as a necessary condition for responsible business practices. Setting aside this dominant assumption and drawing insights from a case study of Fidelity Bank, Nigeria, we explore why and how firms still pursue and enact responsible business practices in what could be described as challenging and non-enabling institutional contexts for CSR. Our findings suggest that responsible business practices in (...) such contexts are often anchored on some CSR adaptive mechanisms. These mechanisms uniquely complement themselves and inform CSR strategies. The CSR adaptive mechanisms and strategies, in combination and in complementarity, then act as an institutional buffer, which enables firms to successfully engage in responsible practices irrespective of their weak institutional settings. We leverage this understanding to contribute to CSR in developing economies, often characterised by challenging and non-enabling institutional contexts. The research, policy and practice implications are also discussed. (shrink)

One of the boldest claims one finds in the enactivist and embodied cognition literature is that perceiving is bodily action. Research on the role of eye movements in vision have been thought to support PBA, whereas research on paralysis has been thought to pose no challenge to PBA. The present paper, however, will argue just the opposite. Eye movement research does not support PBA, whereas paralysis research presents a strong challenge that seems not to have been fully appreciated.

One of the boldest claims one finds in the enactivist and embodied cognition literature is that perceiving is bodily action. Research on the role of eye movements in vision have been thought to support PBA, whereas research on paralysis has been thought to pose no challenge to PBA. The present paper, however, will argue just the opposite. Eye movement research does not support PBA, whereas paralysis research presents a strong challenge that seems not to have been fully appreciated.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly becoming a popular business concept in developed economies. As typical of other business concepts, it is on its way to globalization through practices and structures of the globalized capitalist world order, typified in Multinational Corporations (MNCs). However, CSR often sits uncomfortably in this capitalist world order, as MNCs are often challenged by the global reach of their supply chains and the possible irresponsible practices inherent along these chains. The possibility of irresponsible practices puts global (...) firms under pressure to protect their brands even if it means assuming responsibilities for the practices of their suppliers. Pressure groups understand this burden on firms and try to take advantage of the situation. This article seeks to challenge the often taken-for-granted-assumption that firms should be accountable for the practices of their suppliers by espousing the moral (and sometimes legal) underpinnings of the concept of responsibility. Except where corporate control and or corporate grouping exist, it identifies the use of power as a critical factor to be considered in allocating responsibility in firm-supplier relationship; and suggests that the more powerful in this relationship has a responsibility to exert some moral influence on the weaker party. The article highlights the use of code of conducts, corporate culture, anti-pressure group campaigns, personnel training and value reorientation as possible sources of wielding positive moral influence along supply chains. (shrink)

_A study of the first half of Kant’s Critique of Judgment._.

The three classic regress problems (the Extensive Regress of states, the Intensive Regress of contents, and the Fichte-Henrich-Shoemaker Regress of de se beliefs) related to the Self-Awareness Thesis (that one’s conscious states are the ones that one is aware of being in) can all be elegantly resolved by a self-acquaintance postulate. This resolution, however, entails that consciousness has an irreducibly circular structure and that self-acquaintance should not be conceived of in terms of an independent entity bearing an external or mediated (...) relation to itself but rather in terms of a realized relation-instance relating to itself as well as to something other than itself. Consciousness, on this account, has a categorially curious status. It is like a relation-particular hybrid. This can be formalized in terms of the theory of hypersets, which in turn can be used to elucidate the problem of individuality, one source of the conceptual difficulty with adequately characterizing de se content. (shrink)

pt. 1. 1869-1893.--pt. 2. 1894-1900.--pt. 3. 1901-1908.

Book reviewed in this article: Learning to Heal: The Development of American Medical Education. By Kenneth M. Ludmerer Getting Rid of Patients: Contradictions in the Socialization of Physicians. By Terry Mizrahi.

Background: In the last two decades, nursing authors have published ethical analyses of palliative sedation—an end-of-life care practice that also receives significant attention in the broader medical and bioethics literature. This nursing literature is important, because it contributes to disciplinary understandings about nursing values and responsibilities in end-of-life care. Research aim: The purpose of this project is to review existing nursing ethics literature about palliative sedation, and to analyze how nurses’ moral identities are portrayed within this literature. Research design: We (...) reviewed discussion papers, written by nurses about the ethics of palliative sedation, which were cited in MEDLINE, CINAHL, Nursing and Allied Health, or Philosopher’s Index (search date March 2018). Twenty-one papers met selection criteria. We performed a comprehensive review and analysis (using the Qualitative Analysis Guide of Leuven), of the values, responsibilities, and relationships reflected in authors’ portrayal of the nursing role. Findings: Two different tones are apparent in the extant nursing ethics literature. One is educational, while the other is critically reflective. Irrespective of tone, all authors agree on the alleviation of suffering as a fundamental nursing responsibility. However, they differ in their analysis of this responsibility in relation to other values in end-of-life care, including those that depend on consciousness. Finally, authors emphasize the importance of subjective and experience-based understandings of palliative sedation, which they argue as depending on nurses’ proximity to patients and families in end-of-life care. Discussion and conclusion: Based on our findings, we develop three recommendations for future writing by nurses about palliative sedation. These relate to the responsibility of recognizing how consciousness might matter in (some) peoples’ moral experiences of death and dying, to the importance of moral reflectiveness in nursing practice, and to the value of a relational approach in conceptualizing the nursing ethics of palliative sedation. (shrink)

Several influential philosophers and scientists have advanced a framework, often called Neo-Cartesianism (NC), according to which animal suffering is merely apparent. Drawing upon contemporary neuroscience and philosophy of mind, Neo-Cartesians challenge the mainstream position we shall call Evolutionary Continuity (EC), the view that humans are on a nonhierarchical continuum with other species and are thus not likely to be unique in consciously experiencing negative pain affect. We argue that some Neo-Cartesians have misconstrued the underlying science or tendentiously appropriated controversial views (...) in the philosophy of mind. We discuss recent evidence that undermines the simple neuroanatomical structure-function correlation thesis that undergirds many Neo-Cartesian arguments, has an important bearing on the recent controversy over pain in fish, and places the underlying epistemology framing the debate between NC and EC in a new light that strengthens the EC position. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA Danish fitness chain recently introduced a new concept called Bubbles & Squat. Here, fitness training is combined with free champagne and music. In this paper, we examine this new way of bringing parties, alcohol and physical culture together by exploring the possible meaning of it through existential philosophical analysis. We draw in particular on Nietzsche’s distinction between the Apolline and the Dionysiac, as well as his account of great health. On this basis, we analyse Bubbles & Squat as a (...) case of Dionysiac intoxication, excess and ecstasy sneaking into contemporary Apolline fitness culture. In the last part of the paper, we raise the question if adding parties and bubbles to fitness training may, perhaps paradoxically, be healthy for the participants in an existential sense because it contributes to existential balance between the Dionysiac and the Apolline. We conclude that the philosophical framework presented in this paper can contribute to a new understanding of a general physical c... (shrink)

Corporate Social Responsibility amongst Small and Medium Enterprises is often characterised in the literature as unstructured, informal and ad hoc discretionary philanthropic activities. Drawing insights from recent theoretical/analytical frameworks :52–78, 2010), and on empirical data collected from both Nigeria and Tanzania, we found that CSR practices in SMEs are much more nuanced than previously presented. In addition, SMEs undertake their CSR practices to varying degrees in multiple spaces—i.e. the workplace, marketplace, community and the ecological environment. These CSR practices go beyond (...) philanthropy and in some instances involve institutional works aimed at addressing some of the institutional gaps in the environments where these SMEs operate. The paper makes a contribution by drawing attention to the multiple spaces of CSR practices amongst SMEs, and the institutional works they do, which are often taken for granted in the extant literature. We provide a unique perspective—by arguing that what is frequently conceptualised as philanthropic CSR in Africa is ‘institutional works’. (shrink)

Philosophers now treat the relationship between Classical Mendelian Genetics and molecular biology as a paradigm of nonreduction and this example is playing an increasingly prominent role in debates about the reducibility of theories ranging from macrosocial science to folk psychology. Patricia Churchland (1986), for example, draws an analogy between the alleged elimination of the “causal mainstay” of classical genetics and her view that today’s psychological theory will be eliminated by neuroscience. Patricia Kitcher takes an autonomous rather than eliminativist view of (...) the reported nonreduction in genetics and reasons that psychology will retain a similar autonomy from lower level sciences (1980 and 1982). Although Churchland and Kitcher offer different interpretations of the apparent failure of molecular biology to reduce classical genetics, they agree that this failure will help illuminate theoretical relations between psychology and lower level sciences. The appearance of the Mendelian example along side the usual ones from physics and chemistry marks a turning point in philosophy of science. (shrink)

It has been reported by some studies that the desire to be involved in decisions concerning one’s healthcare especially with regard to obtaining informed consent is related to educational status. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to assess the influence of educational status on attitude towards informed consent practice in three south-eastern Nigerian communities.

McCoy, Liu, Lutz, and Sisti (2020) raise concerns about “partial representation,” in which nonelected advocates or advocacy organizations fail to engage and hold themselves accountable to the full range of people they purport to represent. They are right to point out that the autism community is vulnerable to partial representation. This open peer commentary notes some elements among those engaged with autism that may not fit under the type of “federated model” of representation McCoy, et al recommend. Advocates should tread (...) carefully to avoid some types of harm that do not arise when forming federations on other topics. The influence of antivaxxers and other questionable or harmful movements might even lead us to think, despite the value of open debate and engagement, that there is benefit to partial representation if it prevents potential harms that could arise from legitimizing dangerous practices. (shrink)

A queue‐jumping argument concludes that some course of action is impermissible by likening it to the presumptively impermissible act of jumping a queue. Arguments of this sort may be found in a disparate range of contexts and in support of policies favoured by both left and right. Examples include arguments against private education and private health care but also arguments against accommodations for learning disabilities, refugee resettlement, and birthright citizenship. We infer that, although queue‐jumping arguments are strictly analogies, they constitute (...) a sufficiently distinct class of arguments to justify their separate treatment. The paper proposes an argumentation scheme for queue‐jumping arguments and demonstrates its applicability to some existing arguments of this type. (shrink)

Several well-known theodicies, whatever their merits, seem to make little sense of animal suffering. Here we argue that the problem of animal suffering has more layers than has generally been acknowledged in the literature and thus poses an even greater challenge to traditional Judeo-Christian Theism than is normally thought. However, the Neo-Cartesian (NC) defence would succeed in defanging this Expanded Problem of Animal Suffering. Several contemporary philosophers have suggested that recent evidence either supports the NC view or at least should (...) decrease our incredulity with respect to it. We discuss new evidence that undermines the NC position and thus reassert the gravity of the Expanded Problem. (shrink)

In the extended mind literature, one sometimes finds the claim that there is no neural correlate of consciousness. Instead, there is a biological or ecological correlate of consciousness. Consciousness, it is claimed, supervenes on an entire organism in action. Alva Noë is one of the leading proponents of such a view. This paper resists Noë's view. First, it challenges the evidence he offers from neuroplasticity. Second, it presses a problem with paralysis. Third, it draws attention to a challenge from the (...) existence of metamers and visual illusions. (shrink)