Morain and colleagues (2019) advocate rethinking the rather dogmatic guidance from both regulatory authorities and professional associations cautioning physician-investigators against obtaining inf...

Epistemic pluralism is a form of pluralism whose object is knowledge, a sub- stantial component or prerequisite of knowledge, or a process of knowledge acquisition. It assumes that this target notion can be realised in not one, but many ways, and that this plurality is non-trivial.

In so far as the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu are life-philosophies, they are philosophies of solitude. My aim in the following pages is to explain and defend this claim, clarifying the distinctive kind of solitude that is taught by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.

The transcience of existence, the fragility of life and human transcience do nothing but remind each of us of the imminence of death, now experienced as an unparalleled tragedy, accompanied, often, by the anguish of witnessing a slow and gradual ageing of the body. In the post-modern era characterized by pervasive technology, a new religion is emerging that aims to halt the ageing process and defeat death once and for all. But what is the price to be paid: according to (...) some, we will witness the dissolution of the human being’s soul; according to others, the world will be populated by humanoids with severe psychic problems. (shrink)

Catholic opponents of abortion and embryonic stem cell research usually base their position on a hylomorphic account of ensoulment at fertilization. They maintain that we each started out as one-cell ensouled organisms. Critics of this position argue that it is plagued by a number of intractable problems due to fission (twinning) and fusion. We're unconvinced that such objections to early ensoulment provide any reason to doubt the coherence of the hylomorphic account. However, we do maintain that a defense of ensoulment (...) at fertilization must deny that we're essentially organisms. (shrink)

We used attractiveness judgements as a proxy to visualize the ideal female and male body for male and female participants and investigated how individual differences in the internalization of cultural ideals influence these representations. In the first of two studies, male and female participants judged the attractiveness of 242 male and female computer-generated bodies which varied independently in muscle and adipose. This allowed us to map changes in attractiveness across the complete body composition space, revealing single peaks for the attractiveness (...) of both men and women. In the second study, we asked our participants to choose the most attractive male and female bodies in a method of adjustment task in which they could independently vary muscle and adipose to create the most attractive body. We asked whether individual differences in internalization of cultural ideals, drive for muscularity, eating disorder symptomatology and depressive symptoms could systematically shift the location of peak attractiveness in body composition space. We found a clear preference by both genders for a male body with high muscle and low adipose, and a toned, low adipose female body. The degree of internalization of cultural ideals predicted large individual differences in the composition of the most attractive bodies. (shrink)

We report the results of an experimental test of whether preaching the normative appeal of the sure-thing principle leads decision-makers to make choices that satisfy it. We use Allais-type decision problems to observe the incentive-compatible choices of 147 subjects, which either violate the sure-thing principle or adhere to it. Subjects are presented with normative arguments that support the counterfactual behaviour and then repeat their decisions. We observe violations of the sure-thing principle are robust to its normative justification. This result replicates (...) a famous small-sample observation using hypothetical tasks that was published by Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky almost half a century ago. We argue that this finding is as relevant now as it was then and that their design can be usefully applied to address contemporary issues in behavioural economics. (shrink)

The year 2006 marked the two hundredth anniversary of John Stuart Mill's birth. Though his philosophical reputation has varied greatly, it is now clear that Mill ranks among the most influential modern political thinkers. Despite his enduring influence, the breadth and complexity of Mill's political thought is often underappreciated. While his writings remain a touchstone for debates over liberty and liberalism, many other important dimensions of his political philosophy have until recently been ignored. This book aims to correct such neglect, (...) by illustrating the breadth and depth of Mill's political writings, by drawing together a collection of essays whose authors explore underappreciated elements of Mill's political philosophy. The book shows how Mill's thinking remains pertinent to our own political life in three broad areas - democratic institutions and culture, liberalism, and international politics - and offers a critical reassessment of Mill's political philosophy in light of recent political developments and transformations. (shrink)

One might imagine that this remark of James was too obvious to be denied, but in fact current philosophical orthodoxy runs against it. Since the renewal of interest in the emotions produced by Anthony Kenny's Action Emotion and Will in 1963, philosophers have focussed primarily on the cognitive aspects of emotions—the judgments, evaluations, beliefs, presuppositions which they contain. Bodily feelings have been, on the whole, slighted. Sometimes they are dismissed outright, as by Robert Solomon: “feelings no more constitute or define (...) the emotion than an army of fleas constitutes a homeless dog. … Feeling is the ornamentation of emotion, not its essence.”; more often, as in Jerome Neu, given only rather slight attention because “thoughts are of greater importance than feelings in the classification and discrimination of emotional states”. (shrink)

Earl Conee has argued that the metaphysics of personal identity is irrelevant to the morality of abortion. He claims that doing all the substantial work in abortion arguments are moral principles and they garner no support from rival metaphysics theories. Conee argues that not only can both immaterialist and materialist theories of the self posit our origins at fertilization, but positing such a beginning doesn’t even have any significant impact on the permissibility of abortion. We argue that this thesis is (...) wrong on both accounts. We do so, in part, by relying on a hylomorphic rather than a Cartesian conception of the soul. There are good reasons for believing such a soul theory can favor an earlier origin than the leading materialist accounts. We also show that the theological metaphysics of hylomorphism provide greater support for a pro-life position than the Cartesian position Conee discusses. However, we argue that even on a materialistic account of personal identity, metaphysics has substantial bearing upon the morality of early abortions. (shrink)

We propose Rhythmic Relating for autism: a system of supports for friends, therapists, parents, and educators; a system which aims to augment bidirectional communication and complement existing therapeutic approaches. We begin by summarizing the developmental significance of social timing and the social-motor-synchrony challenges observed in early autism. Meta-analyses conclude the early primacy of such challenges, yet cite the lack of focused therapies. We identify core relational parameters in support of social-motor-synchrony and systematize these using the communicative musicality constructs: pulse; quality; (...) and narrative. Rhythmic Relating aims to augment the clarity, contiguity, and pulse-beat of spontaneous behavior by recruiting rhythmic supports and relatable vitality; facilitating the predictive flow and just-ahead-in-time planning needed for good-enough social timing. From here, we describe possibilities for playful therapeutic interaction, small-step co-regulation, and layered sensorimotor integration. Lastly, we include several clinical case examples demonstrating the use of Rhythmic Relating within four different therapeutic approaches. These clinical case examples are introduced here and several more are included in the Supplementary Material. A suite of pilot intervention studies is proposed to assess the efficacy of combining Rhythmic Relating with different therapeutic approaches in playful work with individuals with autism. Further experimental hypotheses are outlined, designed to clarify the significance of certain key features of the Rhythmic Relating approach. (shrink)

J. J. Thomson's discovery of the negatively charged corpuscle in 1897 is customarily regarded as the discovery of the electron. Thomson, however, did not immediately equate the charge of his corpuscle with the unitary charge, that is the ‘electron’, first proposed by Stoney in 1874. The aim of this paper is to clarify the means by which this identification was eventually made. To do this the work carried out by Thomson and his students at the Cavendish Laboratory between 1897 and (...) 1899 has been examined. From this reconstruction it emerges that, following his work on the mass-to-charge ratio of the corpuscle in 1897, Thomson and his school initiated and developed a series of techniques for measuring the charge of the ions. These techniques could not be used directly to measure the charge of the corpuscles because of the conditions required to produce them. Thomson therefore sought some other phenomenon that could be interpreted in terms of corpuscles and which allowed exploitation of the new charge-measuring techniques. He found such a phenomenon in the photoelectric effect, which allowed the measurement of both the charge and the mass-to-charge ratio of the corpuscle to be made. These measurements showed the charge of the corpuscle to be close to that assigned to the ‘electron’, and the two entities gradually became equated with each other. (shrink)

Background The allocation of scarce deceased donor kidneys is a complex process. Transplant providers are increasingly relying on constructs such as frailty and cognitive function to guide kidney transplant (KT) candidate selection. Patient views of the ethical issues surrounding the use of such constructs are unclear. We sought to assess KT candidates’ attitudes and beliefs about the use of frailty and cognitive function to guide waitlist selection.Methods KT candidates were randomly recruited from an ongoing single-center cohort study of frailty and (...) cognitive function. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and thematic analysis was performed. Inductively derived themes were mapped onto bioethics principles.Results Twenty interviews were conducted (65% contact rate, 100% participation rate) (60% male; 70% White). With respect to the use of frailty and cognitive function in waitlisting decisions, four themes emerged in which participants: (1) valued maximizing a scarce resource (utility); (2) prioritized equal access to all patients (equity); (3) appreciated a proportional approach to the use of equity and utility (precautionary utility); and (4) sought to weigh utility- and equity-based concerns regarding social support. While some participants believed frailty and cognitive function were useful constructs to maximize utility, others believed their use would jeopardize equity. Patients were uncomfortable with using single factors such as frailty or cognitive impairment to deny someone access to transplantation; participants instead encouraged using the constructs to identify opportunities for intervention to improve frailty and cognitive function prior to KT.Conclusions KT candidates’ values mirrored the current allocation strategy, seeking to balance equity and utility in a just manner, albeit with conflicting viewpoints on the appropriate use of frailty and cognitive impairment in waitlisting decisions. (shrink)

Between-subject variability in cognitive performance has been related to inter-individual differences in functional brain networks. Targeting the dorsal attention network we questioned whether resting-state functional connectivity within the DAN can predict individual performance in spatial attention tasks and whether there is short-term adaptation of DAN-FC in response to task engagement. Twenty-seven participants first underwent resting-state fMRI, they subsequently performed different tasks of spatial attention [including visual search ] and immediately afterwards received another rs-fMRI. Intra- and inter-hemispheric FC between core hubs (...) of the DAN, bilateral intraparietal sulcus and frontal eye field, was analyzed and compared between PRE and POST. Furthermore, we investigated rs-fMRI-behavior correlations between the DAN-FC in PRE/POST and task performance parameters. The absolute DAN-FC did not change from PRE to POST. However, different significant rs-fMRI-behavior correlations were revealed for intra-/inter-hemispheric connections in the PRE and POST run. The stronger the FC between left FEF and IPS before task engagement, the better was the learning effect in VS. And the faster the VS, the stronger was the FC between right FEF and IPS after task engagement. To conclude, DAN-FC relates to the individual performance in spatial attention tasks supporting the view of functional brain networks as priors for cognitive ability. Despite a high inter- and intra-individual stability of DAN-FC, the change of FC-behavior correlations after task performance possibly indicates task-related adaptation of the DAN, underlining that behavioral experiences may shape intrinsic brain activity. However, spontaneous state fluctuations of the DAN-FC over time cannot be fully ruled out as an alternative explanation. (shrink)

In an article published recently in this journal, one of us reconstructed how in 1899 J. J. Thomson, after having measured the mass-to-charge ratio of the corpuscle , achieved a measurement of its charge and consequently an estimate of its mass, obtaining in this manner ‘direct proof of the existence of particles smaller than the hydrogen atom’. In this paper, starting with an analysis of Zeeman's first measurements on the widening of spectral lines in a magnetic field, we show that (...) the existence of masses smaller than the atom was already a matter of discussion in early 1897, and that a qualitative estimate of the mass of the electron was made even before Thomson's measurements in 1899. In this process an important role was played by a research programme on the structure of matter carried out by Stoney in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This had in many aspects anticipated Zeeman's experimental observations, and its conclusions were in part formalized in the so-called Larmor theorem. (shrink)

L’étude des fortifications crétoises d’époque classique et hellénistique est rendue difficile par l’absence généralisée de fouille stratigraphique. Pour leur datation, il est nécessaire de se fonder sur le type d’appareil, dont il est pourtant bien connu que sa valeur chronologique n’est que toute relative, voire discutable. Néanmoins, à l’échelle de la Crète, des identités régionales apparaissent, en terme d’appareil. On peut ainsi observer que l’appareil rectangulaire est cantonné à la partie occidentale de la Crète, spécialement entre le mont Ida et (...) les monts Blancs, tandis que l’extrémité orientale de l’île semble avoir eu une prédilection pour les murs non appareillés. La cité d’Aptera, en Crète occidentale, constitue un cas exceptionnel et une énigme, puisque son enceinte, datée dans son ensemble du milieu du ive siècle av. J.‑C., présente deux types d’appareil.Nous présentons ici les différentes explications de l’usage en Crète des différents types d’appareil, qui peuvent être de nature historique aussi bien que géographique. Pour ce dernier point, l’apport des nouvelles technologies, au travers de l’élaboration d’un SIG, pourrait être décisif. (shrink)

The year 2006 marked the two hundredth anniversary of John Stuart Mill's birth. Though his philosophical reputation has varied greatly, it is now clear that Mill ranks among the most influential modern political thinkers. Despite his enduring influence, the breadth and complexity of Mill's political thought is often underappreciated. While his writings remain a touchstone for debates over liberty and liberalism, many other important dimensions of his political philosophy have until recently been ignored. This book aims to correct such neglect, (...) by illustrating the breadth and depth of Mill's political writings, by drawing together a collection of essays whose authors explore underappreciated elements of Mill's political philosophy. The book shows how Mill's thinking remains pertinent to our own political life in three broad areas - democratic institutions and culture, liberalism, and international politics - and offers a critical reassessment of Mill's political philosophy in light of recent political developments and transformations. (shrink)

This study investigated the applicability of a novel instrument to assess parent–child attunement in free play interactions, in dyads with an infant with and without visual impairments. We here report the findings on the reliability and applicability of the newly developed Attune & Stimulate Mother–Infant 56-items Instrument in two separate samples: one with infants with VI and one with typically sighted infants. In addition, we assessed the contribution of parental sensitivity to attunement in dyadic interactions. The A&S M-I is an (...) observational comprehensive instrument of behaviors that captures different body parts and their motility, and different senses. The appropriate responding of a parent to the child’s signal reflects the ability to attune in the dyad as well as parent’s ability to stimulate the child to become engaged in the contact or activity. Consistency assessments revealed good reliability for maternal and infant behaviors, acceptable internal consistency and good test–retest reliability. Furthermore, both samples scored significantly above chance level on attunement, suggesting that the instrument captures parent–infant behavioral coordination, and VI was not related to parent–infant attunement. Lastly, a relation between parental sensitivity and attunement was found only in the TS sample. Altogether, these findings provide promising initial evidence of the applicability of the A&S M-I instrument for assessing dyadic attunement across different populations and ages. Having assessed the applicability of this observational instrument, future work should corroborate these findings in larger samples. (shrink)