In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) both in health care and academic philosophy. This has been due mainly to the rise of effective machine learning and deep learning algorithms, together with increases in data collection and processing power, which have made rapid progress in many areas. However, use of this technology has brought with it philosophical issues and practical problems, in particular, epistemic and ethical. In this paper the authors, with backgrounds in (...) philosophy, maternity care practice and clinical research, draw upon and extend a recent framework for shared decision-making (SDM) that identified a duty of care to the client's knowledge as a necessary condition for SDM. This duty entails the responsibility to acknowledge and overcome epistemic defeaters. This framework is applied to the use of AI in maternity care, in particular, the use of machine learning and deep learning technology to attempt to enhance electronic fetal monitoring (EFM). In doing so, various sub-kinds of epistemic defeater, namely, transparent, opaque, underdetermined, and inherited defeaters are taxonomized and discussed. The authors argue that, although effective current or future AI-enhanced EFM may impose an epistemic obligation on the part of clinicians to rely on such systems' predictions or diagnoses as input to SDM, such obligations may be overridden by inherited defeaters, caused by a form of algorithmic bias. The existence of inherited defeaters implies that the duty of care to the client's knowledge extends to any situation in which a clinician (or anyone else) is involved in producing training data for a system that will be used in SDM. Any future AI must be capable of assessing women individually, taking into account a wide range of factors including women's preferences, to provide a holistic range of evidence for clinical decision-making. (shrink)

Recently claims have been made for radical new insights in the field of invertebrate immunology that involve memory, specificity and/or maternal transfer of immunocompetence. For evidence these claims rely on phenomena, such as survival or reproductive capacity, observed at the level of the whole organism. The allure of these apparently revelatory hypotheses is that they are contrary to established views of innate immunity. They draw implicit analogy to adaptive responses in jawed vertebrates and the terminology used creates an incomplete and (...) misleading picture. We argue that the case for adaptive immunity in invertebrates based only on such phenomena is weak and flawed, as it can only be upheld if supported by descriptions of the underlying mechanisms. We caution against a reliance on this approach as a means of advancing this field—highlighting, as an example, some negative commercial implications of adopting this approach. BioEssays 29:1138–1146, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

A criticism of some research involving Aboriginal people is that it is not equitable in its design or application, further disadvantaging the poor and marginalized. In Australia, much research has been done on Aboriginal people, but Aboriginal people themselves have benefited little, adding to distrust between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people over many years. Is it possible to take “scientific” research practices and transform them into research that can be done with a community rather than on a community? How can research (...) findings benefit Aboriginal people? This chapter shares our study of Aboriginal people’s stories of diabetes care. It is a collaborative story told by four Aboriginal Health Workers and two non-Aboriginal researchers which focuses on methodology rather than findings. We share aspects of our research which we propose values Aboriginal people and invites participation and reciprocity at design, data collection, and research translation stages. We discuss tensions which occur between the “scientific way” and the “culturally appropriate way” and describe how we resolved this. Imposing research designs and practices on Aboriginal people and communities without consideration that each community is unique has the potential to cause further harm and disempowerment. Valuing an Aboriginal way of knowing influenced all aspects of our study design and procedures. We would like to inspire others to challenge methodological norms to develop research methods with their community to allow the unique voice of their community to be heard and for this to facilitate pragmatic change leading to meaningful improvements in health. (shrink)

For years a debate has raged within the various literatures of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology over whether, and to what degree, the concepts that characterize psychopathology are social constructions that reflect cultural values. While the majority position among philosophers has been normativist, i.e., that the conception of a mental disorder is value-laden, a vocal and cogent minority have argued that psychopathology results from malfunctions that can be described by terminology that is objective and scientific. Scientists and clinicians have tended to (...) endorse the objectivist position, with some notable exceptions. (shrink)

A great deal of interest and excitement surround the interface between the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of psychology, yet the area is neither well defined nor well represented in mainstream philosophical publications. This book is perhaps the first to open a dialogue between the two disciplines. Its aim is to broaden the traditional subject matter of the philosophy of biology while informing the philosophy of psychology of relevant biological constraints and insights.The book is organized around six themes: functions (...) and teleology, evolutionary psychology, innateness, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and parallels between philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind. Throughout, one finds overlapping areas of study, larger philosophical implications, and even larger conceptual ties. Woven through these connections are shared concerns about the status of semantics, scientific law, evolution and adaptation, and cognition in general. Contributors André Ariew, Mark A. Bedau, David J. Buller, Paul Sheldon Davies, Stephen M. Downes, Charbel Niño El-Hani, Owen Flanagan, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Todd Grantham, Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Gary Hatfield, Daniel W. McShea, Karen Neander, Shaun Nichols, Antonio Marcos Pereira, Tom Polger, Lawrence A. Shapiro, Kim Sterelny, Robert A. Wilson, William C. Wimsatt. (shrink)

First published in 1964, this is not just a chronicle or encyclopaedia, but deals thoroughly in turn with meaning, view about reason, and views about values, particularly moral values. The author's knowledge of French literature if extensive and thorough, and a feature of the book is his analysis of the philosophical implications of literarry wroks by Sartre, Paul Valery, Camus and others.

First published in 1964, this is not just a chronicle or encyclopaedia, but deals thoroughly in turn with meaning, view about reason, and views about values, particularly moral values. The author's knowledge of French literature is extensive and thorough, and a feature of the book is his analysis of the philosophical implications of literary works by Sartre, Paul Valery, Camus and others.

Martin Heidegger is, perhaps, the most controversial philosopher of the twentieth-century. Little has been written on him or about his work and its significance for educational thought. This unique collection by a group of international scholars reexamines Heidegger's work and its legacy for educational thought.

The paper presents the outlines of an ontology of plans and guidelines, which is then used as the basis for a framework for implementing guideline-based systems for the management of workflow in health care organizations. The framework has a number of special features, above all in that it enables us to represent in formal terms assignments of work-items both to individuals and to teams and to tailor guideline to specific contexts of application in health care organizations. It is designed also (...) to enable implementations to do justice to the fact that the processes carried out in health care organizations may deviate in different ways from the norms set forth in corresponding guideline definitions. This means that implementations built in conformity with the framework will be marked by a type of flexibility that might make them more likely to be accepted by healthcare professionals than are standard guideline-based management systems. (shrink)

The notion of risk plays a central role in economics, finance, health, psychology, law and elsewhere, and is prevalent in managing challenges and resources in day-to-day life. In recent work, Duncan Pritchard (2015, 2016) has argued against the orthodox probabilistic conception of risk on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how probable it is, and in favour of a modal conception on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how modally close it is. (...) In this article, we use Pritchard’s discussion as a springboard for a more wide-ranging discussion of the notion of risk. We introduce three different conceptions of risk: the standard probabilistic conception, Pritchard’s modal conception, and a normalcy conception that is new (though it has some precursors in the psychological literature on risk perception). Ultimately, we argue that the modal conception is ill-suited to the roles that a notion of risk is required to play and explore the prospects for a form of pluralism about risk, embracing both the probabilistic and the normalcy conceptions. (shrink)

v. 1. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian Constitution. Rhetoric. On Poetics.--v. 2. Logic.--v. 3. Physics. Metaphysics. On the soul. Short physical treaties.--v. 4. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Biological treatises.

This book offers geographical perspectives on the condition of the United States at the outset of the twenty-first century. It compares the American ideals of liberty, equality, individual opportunity, and social improvement with the contemporary condition of the regions, states and localities - the ideal American space with its reality as a place. It uses the public standard provided by the official ideology of the United States to see how well things are really going. The authors consider the contrast between (...) ideal and reality at local, state, and national levels in education, health, and welfare, in community, race, gender, and class relations, in economic and industrial development, and in the use and exploitation of America's landscape. Each chapter addresses the issues through evidence of long-term and recent trends, and grounds its arguments in information. American Space/American Place provides a series of compelling insights into the current condition of American society, its natural environment, and its place within the world. (shrink)

The concept of wilderness, as denned in the U.S.A. Wilderness Act of 1964, is analyzed and found to be ambiguous. This is an administrative advantage. The concept of underground wilderness is then introduced and found to be applicable under the terms of the Act. It is argued that the longest cave in the world, the Flint Ridge Cave System in Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky, can and should be officially declared as wilderness by Congress even though the surface above it (...) is now developed. (shrink)

We describe and analyze 13 cases handled by our ethics consultation service (ECS) in which families requested continuation of physiological support for loved ones after death by neurological criteria (DNC) had been declared. These ethics consultations took place between 2005 and 2013. Patients’ ages ranged from 14 to 85. Continued mechanical ventilation was the focal intervention sought by all families. The ECS’s advice and recommendations generally promoted “reasonable accommodation” of the requests, balancing compassion for grieving families with other ethical and (...) moral concerns such as stewardship of resources, professional integrity, and moral distress. In cases we characterized as finitegoal accommodation, a “reasonable accommodation” strategy proved effective in balancing stakeholders’ interests and goals, enabling steady progress toward resolution. When a family objected outright to a declaration of DNC and asked for an indefinite accommodation, the “reasonable accommodation” approach offered clinicians little practical direction, and resolution required definitive action by either the family or the clinical team. Based on our analysis and reflections on these 13 cases, we propose ethically justified and practical guidelines to assist healthcare professionals, administrators, and ECSs faced with similar cases. (shrink)

In this paper, we present the results of two surveys that investigate subjects’ judgments about what can be known or justifiably believed about lottery outcomes on the basis of statistical evidence, testimonial evidence, and “mixed” evidence, while considering possible anchoring and priming effects. We discuss these results in light of seven distinct hypotheses that capture various claims made by philosophers about lay people’s lottery judgments. We conclude by summarizing the main findings, pointing to future research, and comparing our findings to (...) recent studies by Turri and Friedman. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractEnormous efforts and resources are being invested in the search for biomarkers for early cancer detection. However, the biology and genetics of cancer, an extremely heterogeneous disease from the molecular viewpoint, thwart the clinical application of laboratory discoveries, and the sought-for pan-cancer biomarkers for population screening remain out of reach. Notwithstanding advances made using artificial intelligence to overcome current limitations in cancer biomarker research, in article number 1900122, Tommaso A. Dragani et al. speculate that there is still a long (...) way to go before this important public health goal is achieved. (shrink)

Thousands of candidate cancer biomarkers have been proposed, but so far, few are used in cancer screening. Failure to implement these biomarkers is attributed to technical and design flaws in the discovery and validation phases, but a major obstacle stems from cancer biology itself. Oncogenomics has revealed broad genetic heterogeneity among tumors of the same histology and same tissue (or organ) from different patients, while tumors of different tissue origins also share common genetic mutations. Moreover, there is wide intratumor genetic (...) heterogeneity among cells within any single neoplasm. These findings seriously limit the prospects of finding a single biomarker with high specificity for early cancer detection. Current research focuses on developing biomarker panels, with data assessment by machine‐learning algorithms. Whether such approaches will overcome the inherent limitations posed by tumor biology and lead to tests with true clinical value remains to be seen. (shrink)

When do humans become moral beings? This commentary draws on developmental psychology theory to expand the understanding of early moral behaviours. We argue that by looking at a broader range of other-oriented acts than what has been considered by Baumard et al., we can find support for the mutualistic approach to morality even in early instances of other-oriented behaviours.

Three experiments investigated reasoners' beliefs about causal powers; that is, their beliefs about the capacity of a putative cause to produce a given effect. Covariation-based theories (e.g., Cheng, 1997; Kelley, 1973; Novick & Cheng, 2004) posit that beliefs in causal power are represented in terms of the degree of covariation between the cause and its effect; covariation is defined in terms of the degree to which the effect occurs in the presence of the cause, and fails tooccur in the absence (...) of the cause. To test the degree to which beliefs incausal power are reflected in beliefs about covariation information, participants in three experiments rated their beliefs that putative causes have the capacity to produce a given effect (i.e., possess the causal power to produce an effect) as well as their beliefs regarding the degree to which the putative cause and effectcovary. A strong positive correlation was discovered between participants' beliefs in causal power and their beliefs that the effect occurs in the presence of the cause. However, no direct relationship was found between participants' beliefs in causal power and their belief that the effect will fail tooccur in the absence of the cause. These findings were replicated using bothwithin- (Experiments 1 and 3) and between-subject designs (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, we extended these analyses to measures of familiarity, imageability, and detailedness of the representation. We found that participants' beliefs in causal power were strongly associated with familiarity, and imageability, but not the perceived detailedness of the cause and effect relationship. These data provide support for a multidimensional account of causal knowledge whereby people's representations of causation include, but are not limited to, the covariation, familiarity, and imageability of cause and effect relationships. (shrink)

In the Gorgias, Plato has Polus ask Socrates if he would rather suffer injustice than perform it. Socrates’ response is justly famous, affirming a view that Polus himself finds incredible, and one that even contemporary readers find difficult to credit: “for my part, I would prefer neither, but if it had to be one or the other, I would choose to suffer rather than do what is unjust”. In this paper, we take up the part of Socrates’ response that Polus (...) never engages and that has also been completely neglected by contemporary scholars, namely, Socrates’ explicit aversion to being a victim of injustice. We show that this same aversion—though one not nearly as strong as his aversion to doing injustice—appears in several texts, and we argue that the best explanation of such an aversion derives from two important features of Socratic philosophy, both of which have only recently been recognized in Socratic scholarship: his virtue intellectualism, which conceives of virtue as a kind of craft that can be achieved in different degrees, and his conception of moral psychology, which allows for non-rational influences on how we perform the cognitive functions required for proper deliberation. (shrink)

McAllestar (computer science, MIT) describes ONTIC, the interactive system for verifying represents a significant change of direction in the field of mechanical deduction, a key area in computer science and artificial intelligence. Fourteen interrelated essays comprise a multifaceted dialogue about intersubjectivity, reciprocity, and the nature of self and other, especially as these themes are developed in Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the invisible. The question they explore is whether the reversible alterity of sensing and being sensed, a theme at the heart (...) of Merleau-Ponty's thought, is sufficient for understanding the alterity of other persons and of nature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Philosophers and other scholars have often claimed that the arts are not only cognitively valuable but also morally improving (e.g., Nussbaum, 1997). However, their arguments often proceed with little attention to empirical evidence. At the same time, filmmakers and media creators deliberately use devices to direct their audience’s attention, with the intention of impacting viewers’ cognitive, affective, and neurological responses in meaningful ways (Carroll & Seeley, 2013). Whether these devices have the desired effects, and on whom, also remains largely untested. (...) If we want to understand the ways that film and media can have moral impacts, we must step out of our disciplinary siloes. It is not enough for film experts, philosophers, and experimentalists to merely take note of each other’s work; collaborative interdisciplinary research is required, both to improve methods and to examine questions that have not yet been empirically explored. In this article we propose a model for this kind of research, focusing on how media can influence moral understanding. We first outline the challenges that must be met for such research to be successful, including clarifying and operationalizing concepts, measuring moral understanding, and applying empirical methods to media and the arts. We then describe the advantages of interdisciplinary collaboration for meeting these challenges, in the context of some recent examples of interdisciplinary projects on related themes. (shrink)

Report on Dagstuhl Seminar 07132, Schloss Dagstuhl, March 27-30 , 2007.

In philosophical analyses of the value of sport, a relatively unheralded feature is the opportunity that sport offers for admiration. While we readily salute many of the things that people admire (...