Introduction Understanding the views of the public is essential if generally acceptable policies are to be devised that balance research access to general practice patient records with protection of patients' privacy. However, few large studies have been conducted about public attitudes to research access to personal health information. Methods A mixed methods study was performed. Informed by focus groups and literature review, a questionnaire was designed which assessed attitudes to research access to personal health information and factors that influence these. (...) A postal survey was conducted of an electoral roll-based sample of the adult population of Ireland. Results Completed questionnaires were returned by 1575 (40.6%). Among the respondents, 67.5% were unwilling to allow GPs to decide when researchers could access identifiable personal health information. However, 89.5% said they would agree to ongoing consent arrangements, allowing the sharing by GPs of anonymous personal health information with researchers without the need for consent on a study-by-study basis. Increasing age (by each 10-year increment), being retired and primary level education only were significantly associated with an increased likelihood of agreeing that any personal health information could be shared on an ongoing basis: OR 1.39 (95% CI 1.18 to 1.63), 2.00 (95% CI 1.22 to 3.29) and 3.91 (95% CI 1.95 to 7.85), respectively. Conclusions Although survey data can be prone to response biases, this study suggests that prior consent agreements allowing the supply by GPs of anonymous personal health information to researchers may be widely supported, and that populations willing to opt in to such arrangements may be sufficiently representative to facilitate valid and robust consent-dependent observational research. (shrink)

This book applies Augustine's thought to current questions of teaching and learning. The essays are written in an accessible style and is not intended just for experts on Augustine or church history.

Paracelsus was a transmutational alchemist: For most of his career, he believed that one metal could be turned into another. In an alchemical text, the De renovatione et restauratione, he explored the theoretical foundations of transmutation and hinted at recipes for bringing it about. He proposed that from plants, gems, metals, and minerals might be prepared a class of marvelous medicaments, which he called prima entia (first entities). Each primum ens had particular uses, but the entia were all supposed to (...) be able to revitalize the human body and cleanse it of disease. Certain entia could also transmute metals. The De renovatione et restauratione affirmed the metaphysical centrality, in goldmaking and medicine alike, not just of purification or alteration but of renewal and transformation. It expressed the author’s eschatological excitement at God’s works of wonder, whether within or above nature. (shrink)

Detailed studies of people who have experienced the Capgras delusion (the delusion that certain other people, usually close relatives, have been replaced by impostors) have led to advances in constructing an account which can deal with the basic symptomatology, testing alternative possibilities, generating and testing non‐trivial predictions, and broadening the scope of the basic account to encompass other delusions. This paper outlines these developments. It uses them to explore implications for understanding the formation and maintenance of beliefs, and to discuss (...) basic principles of what has come to be known as cognitive neuropsychiatry. (shrink)

What is the function of cognition? On one influential account, cognition evolved to co-ordinate behaviour with environmental change or complexity. Liberal interpretations of this view ascribe cognition to an extraordinarily broad set of biological systems—even bacteria, which modulate their activity in response to salient external cues, would seem to qualify as cognitive agents. However, equating cognition with adaptive flexibility per se glosses over important distinctions in the way biological organisms deal with environmental complexity. Drawing on contemporary advances in theoretical biology (...) and computational neuroscience, we cash these distinctions out in terms of different kinds of generative models, and the representational and uncertainty-resolving capacities they afford. This analysis leads us to propose a formal criterion for delineating cognition from other, more pervasive forms of adaptive plasticity. On this view, biological cognition is rooted in a particular kind of functional organisation; namely, that which enables the agent to detach from the present and engage in counterfactual inference. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of what we can learn about face perception from studying its disorders. The term “disorders” is broadly interpreted to include acquired brain injury and disease, neurodevelopmental differences, and neuropsychiatric problems. The article examines the reasons for various opinions about what can be learnt from disorders, ranging from the entire spectrum from “nothing that isn't misleading” to “everything worth knowing.” Cognitive neuropsychology typically operates in a unique way, in which the emphasis is on detailed analysis of (...) individual patients with theoretically interesting impairments. The article then highlights a number of the assumptions that get made, explains why things are often complicated, and emphasizes the value of a pragmatic “converging operations” approach in which evidence from disorders of face perception is brought together with other sources of data and theory. (shrink)

Some cases of prosopagnosia involve a highly circumscribed loss of A-consciousness. When seen in this way they offer further support for the arguments made in Block's target article.

This paper defends a key aspect of the Peircean conception of truth—the idea that truth is in some sense epistemically-constrained. It does so by exploring parallels between Peirce’s epistemology of inquiry and that of Wittgenstein in On Certainty. The central argument defends a Peircean claim about truth by appeal to a view shared by Peirce and Wittgenstein about the structure of reasons. This view relies on the idea that certain claims have a special epistemic status, or function as what are (...) popularly called ‘hinge propositions’. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce famously claimed that ‘The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth’ (W3: 273). Christopher Hookway has argued for a highly distinctive interpretation of this claim in terms of speech-acts and the normative commitments we incur in performing them. So-construed, Peirce’s conception of truth is difficult to compare with standard theories of the concept, which tend to focus instead upon some property or feature that is (...) shared by all and only true propositions, and with whether or not that property is substantive or metaphysically significant. This paper examines Hookway’s interpretation of Peirce’s conception of truth in an effort to clarify its position in logical space. It then raises some difficulties for the way Hookway tries to accommodate Peirce’s remarks about the special status of assertion and belief in science. (shrink)

In his influential book Truth, Paul Horwich deploys a philosophical method focused on linguistic usage, that is, on the function(s) the concept of truth serves in actual discourse. In doing so Horwich eschews abstract metaphysics, arguing that metaphysical or ontological conceptions of truth rest on basic misconceptions. From this description, one might reasonably expect Horwich's book to have drawn inspiration from, or even embodied philosophical pragmatism of some kind. Unfortunately Horwich relies upon Russell's tired caricature of pragmatism about truth (''p' (...) is true if and only if it is useful to believe p' (Ibid., p. 34, p. 47)), and as a result underestimates the challenge it poses to Minimalism. This paper develops a pragmatist critique of minimalism that focuses on the seemingly central, plausibly constitutive role played by the concept of truth in the speech-act of assertion. The critique suggests that Horwich's Minimalism does not and cannot accomplish its stated goal of explaining all of the facts involving truth. Indeed, the kind of thorough-going deflationism sought by Horwich and others (including pragmatist sympathizer Bob Brandom) is incompatible with an adequate account of assertion, and perhaps other concepts (like belief, judgement and inquiry) as well. (shrink)

We examine the impact of an ethics education program on reporting behavior using two groups of students: fourth year Masters of Accounting students who just completed a newly instituted ethics education program, and fifth year students in the same program who did not receive the ethics program. In an experiment providing both the opportunity and motivation to misreport for more money, we design two social condition treatments – anonymity and public disclosure – to examine whether or to what extent ethical (...) values are internalized by students. We find that when participants are anonymous, misreporting rates are nearly the same regardless of ethics program participation. However, when their reporting behavior is made public to the cohort, participants who completed the ethics program misreported at significantly lower rates than those who did not receive the ethics program. The results suggest that ethics education does not necessarily result in internalized ethical values, but it can impact ethical behavior. (shrink)

The God of Israel in the theology of Robert Jenson -- Jenson's hermeneutics -- Godd in Israel's life -- The God of Israel and Jesus -- The God of Israel and the Trinity -- The God of Israel, the People of God, and the Eschaton -- The identity of the one and triune God of Israel -- Jenson, the God of Israel, and non-supersessionist theology.

In this pivotal year for gene editing, the breakthrough molecular system CRISPR–Cas9 has advanced on three fronts. In under seven months, an influential scientific body—the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine—cracked open the door to human germline gene editing, ownership of patents covering CRISPR–Cas9 came into much sharper focus as a result of a dispute between two parties, and experiments showing proof of concept of the most controversial of uses—altering germlines of (...) humans—were revealed as having been successfully performed by a mainstream laboratory. Given the vast spoils that await the patent owners, final results of all patent disputes over CRISPR–Cas9 patents may stretch on for years. Meanwhile, bioethical considerations of CRISPR–Cas9 have also been contentious as the United States and other countries grapple with how best to regulate gene editing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 55-59 [Access article in PDF] One Stage Is Not Enough Andrew W. Young and Karel W. de Pauw Keywords: delusions, Cotard delusion, Capgras delusion, cognitive neuropsychiatry. WE WELCOME THE OPPORTUNITY to offer our reflections on Philip Gerrans' interesting paper. Our opinion is that on fundamental issues we agree quite a bit—but there are clear differences when it comes to details.The most basic (...) issue concerns the nature of the enterprise. Like Gerrans, we think that it is possible to create testable accounts of the formation and maintenance of what would otherwise seem bizarre and inexplicable delusions, and that these accounts should be grounded in theoretical models of factors that underpin our everyday perception and reasoning. This general approach certainly forms part of what has been called cognitive neuropsychiatry. However, we disagree with Gerrans in that we see cognitive neuropsychiatry as an attempt to draw on the underlying logic of cognitive neuropsychology, rather than (as Gerrans implies) its current methods. The underlying logic of cognitive neuropsychological approaches has been to try to understand the effects of brain injury in terms of disruption of different components of theoretical models of normal abilities. In this approach, a model of normal performance is tested by its ability to account for the effects of brain injury. Where the model of normal performance also provides a convincing account of brain injury it is retained, and when it fails to account for effects of brain injury, it is revised or abandoned. In cognitive neuropsychiatry, the key theoretical move has been to argue that an adequate model of normal performance should be able to account for any disordered pattern (Ellis and Young 1990). The same logic of seeking to explain disordered performance by reference to models of normal function is then attempted, but for disorders that would usually fall within the province of psychiatry.In our opinion, however, cognitive neuropsychiatry will not simply involve importing the methods of cognitive neuropsychology into the new domain; they will need to be developed and adapted to fit the new agenda (Young 2000).In cognitive neuropsychology, progress has often come from the careful investigation of people with stable, selective deficits of fundamental cognitive functions involved in sensory analysis, memory, and verbal or motor output. In contrast, delusional beliefs can be relatively unstable; often they are only held for a few weeks or even days. When the delusions change, patients may modify or abandon them as suddenly as they seemed to form them, or they may give them up much more slowly and reluctantly. At the very least, this creates difficulties in the timing of investigations and in interpreting the relation of deficits and symptoms, which may be recorded on separate dates. These methodological problems [End Page 55] are exacerbated by the fact that deficits linked to complex abnormal experiences such as delusions may be multifaceted and diffuse, even when the delusions themselves have a specific content or theme. Such complications do not invalidate cognitive neuropsychiatry, but they do mean it will need to develop its own methods for dealing with them and making appropriate inferences.One of the key complexities that has surfaced already involves the idea that delusional beliefs might reflect the interaction of two or more contributory factors. Gerrans discusses a particular variant of this idea, which had been suggested by Young and Leafhead (1996) as an approach to understanding the Cotard delusion: The Cotard delusion represents a depressed person's attempt to account for abnormal perceptual experiences. It follows that the delusion is based on an unfortunate interaction between different contributory factors. One set of factors creates the abnormal perceptual experiences, which are characterised by lack of emotional responses and feelings of emptiness, depersonalisation and derealisation. The other factors result in a misinterpretation of these perceptual changes, in which the patients' depressed moods lead them correctly to attribute the changes to themselves, but to exaggerate their consequences. (Young and Leafhead, 1996, 166) Gerrans describes this as a two-stage account, but argues that a one-stage account based only on abnormal perceptual... (shrink)

: Many philosophers interpret Edmund Husserl as relying upon his phenomenological epoché to escape contextual powers so as to recover a contextually unconditioned "constituting" consciousness. I show, however, that in both Ideas I and Cartesian Meditations Husserl relies upon the epoché for something more modest, though important: studying the immanent "reaches" of experience—experience providing, among other things, intuitive disclosures that ultimately legitimate all "science." For this study, experience is to be taken as it exists, even if contextually conditioned. The epoché (...) thus supports a study of experiential immanence—a study definitive of phenomenology—compatible with contextual conditioning. (shrink)

This essay argues against David Carr’s relativism by clarifying the in principle requirements appropriate to non-relative truths and showing that de facto differences of conceptual frameworks threaten none of them. Non-relative truths are not threatened by history. This defense of non-relative truth belongs to a larger defense of Husserlian “science” that shows how essences, even those “delivered” by history, have a universal “governance” and can be affirmed in nonrelative truths-as such science requires. If history also allows the other qualities of (...) Husserlian science to obtain, then, the essay concludes, such science can exist even as a “situated science.”. (shrink)