The algebraic proof of Craig's interpolation lemma for m-valued logic was given by Rasiowa in [1]. We present here a constructive proof of this lemma, based on a Gentzen type formalization.

Can the government stick us with privacy we don't want? It can, it does, and according to this author, may need to do more of it. Privacy is a foundational good, she argues, a necessary tool in the liberty-lover's kit for a successful life. A nation committed to personal freedom must be prepared to mandate inalienable, liberty-promoting privacies for its people, whether they eagerly embrace them or not. The eight chapters of this book are reflections on public regulation of privacy (...) at home; isolation and confinement for punitive and health reasons; religious modesty attire; erotic nudity; workplace and professional confidentiality; racial privacy; online transactions; social networking; and the collection, use and storage of electronic data. (shrink)

One of the most intriguing of philosophical puzzles concerns other minds. How do you know there are any? Yes, you're surrounded by living organisms that look and behave much as you do. They even say they have minds. But do they? Perhaps other humans are mindless zombies: like you on the outside, but lacking any inner conscious life, including emotions, thoughts, experiences and even pain. What grounds do you possess for supposing that other humans aren't zombies? Perhaps less than you (...) think. Anita Avramides tackles this fascinating question. (shrink)

Ethics consultation has become an integral part of the fabric of U.S. health care delivery. This article summarizes the second edition of the Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation report of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. The core knowledge and skills competencies identified in the first edition of Core Competencies have been adopted by various ethics consultation services and education programs, providing evidence of their endorsement as health care ethics consultation (HCEC) standards. This revised report was prompted (...) by thinking in the field that has evolved since the original report. Patients, family members, and health care providers who encounter ethical questions or concerns that ethics consultants could help address deserve access to efficient, effective, and accountable HCEC services. All individuals providing such services should be held to the standards of competence and quality described in the revised report. (shrink)

In recent decades, the intertwining ideas of self-determination and well-being have received tremendous support in bioethics. Discussions regarding self-determination, or autonomy, often focus on two dimensions—the capacity of the patient and the freedom from external coercion. The practice of obtaining informed consent, for example, has become a standard procedure in therapeutic and research medicine. On the surface, it appears that patients now have more opportunities to exercise their self-determination than ever. Nonetheless, discussions of patient autonomy in the bioethics literature, which (...) focus on individual patients making particular decisions, neglect the social structure within which health-care decisions are made. Looking through the lens of disability and informed by the feminist conception of relational autonomy, this essay argues that the issue of autonomy is much more complex than the individualist model suggests. The social system and the ableist ideology impose various forms of pressure or oppressive power that can affect people’s ability to choose according to their value system. Even if such powers are not directly coercive, they influence potential parents’ decisions indirectly—they structure their alternatives in such a way that certain options are never considered as viable and other decisions must be made. This paper argues that, instead of only focusing on the individual act of decision-making, we need to pay attention to the social structure that frames people’s decision. (shrink)

'Anita L. Allen breaks new ground...A stunning indictment of women's status in contemporary society, her book provides vital original scholarly research and insight.' |s-NEW DIRECTIONS FOR WOMEN.

Today, more corporations disclose information about their environmental performance in response to stakeholder demands of environmental responsibility and accountability. What information do corporations disclose on their websites? This paper investigates the environmental management policies and practices of the 200 largest corporations in the world. Based on a content analysis of the environmental reports of Fortune’s Global 200 companies, this research analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosures with respect to the following seven areas: environmental planning considerations, top management support to (...) the institutionalization of environmental concerns, environmental structures and organizing specifics, environmental leadership activities, environmental control, external validations or certifications of environmental programs, and forms of corporate environmental disclosures. (shrink)

Disagreement about the properattitude toward disability proliferates. Yetlittle attention has been paid to an importantmeta-question, namely, whether ``disability'' isan essentially contested concept. If so, recentdebates between bioethicists and the disabilitymovement leadership cannot be resolved. Inthis essay I identify some of the presumptionsthat make their encounters so contentious. Much more must happen, I argue, for anydiscussions about disability policy andpolitics to be productive. Progress depends onconstructing a neutral conception ofdisability, one that neither devaluesdisability nor implies that persons withdisabilities are inadequate. So, (...) first, I clearaway the conceptual underbrush that makes usthink our idea of disability must bevalue-laden. Second, I sketch someconstituents of, and constraints upon, aneutral notion of disability. (shrink)

Anita Chari revives the concept of reification from Marx and the Frankfurt School to spotlight the resistance to neoliberal capitalism now forming at the level of political economy and at the more sensate, experiential level of subjective transformation. Reading art by Oliver Ressler, Zanny Begg, Claire Fontaine, Jason Lazarus, and Mika Rottenberg, as well as the politics of Occupy Wall Street, Chari identifies practices through which artists and activists have challenged neoliberalism's social and political logics, exposing its inherent tensions (...) and contradictions. (shrink)

This paper relates Donaldson and Dunfee’s Integrative Social Contracts Theory to the problem of gender discrimination. We make the assumption that multinational managers might seek some guidance from ISCT to resolve ethical issues of gender discrimination in countries indifferent or hostile to gender equaIity. The role of Donaldson and Dunfee’s “hypernorms” seems especially cruciaI, and we find that, under their writings thus far, no “hypernorms” exist to make unethical the most blatant acts of sex discrimination in a host country whose (...) local norms tolerate such discrimination. The genesis of “hypernorms” as “global moral minimums” is recounted, and specific application of ISCT to a familiar ethics case (“A Foreign Assignment”) is provided. (shrink)

Recent developments in neuroscience have enabled technological advances to modulate cognitive functions of the brain. Despite ethical concerns about cognitive enhancement, both individuals and society as a whole can benefit greatly from these technologies, depending on how we regulate their use. To date, regulatory analyses of neuromodulation technologies have focused on a technology itself – for instance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation of a brain stimulation device – rather than the use of a technology, such as the use (...) of a brain stimulation device at work or school. Given that some forms of cognitive enhancement have already started to penetrate the general public’s everyday life, we should begin our discussion on potential regulatory issues regarding their use in various real-world situations. The goal of the article is to fill the gap by providing an analytic framework to examine these regulatory issues. More specifically, it aims to illustrate the issues around respecting autonomy and preventing coercive use of cognitive enhancement. The proposed framework categories the real-world settings where a neuromodulation technology can be used for cognitive enhancement based on two criteria – who is subjected to cognitive enhancement and who imposes cognitive enhancement. Based on this framework, the article analyzes regulatory issues arising out of every combination of subject/imposing party by taking one example case. Focusing on the regulations in the U.S., this analysis shows the current lack of adequate safeguards against the coercive use and calls for more attention from government agencies and researchers to develop sound policies regarding current and potentially more widespread use of cognitive enhancement. (shrink)

Uncertainty is inherent in new and unexpected viral outbreaks such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. It imposes challenges for health officials in soliciting cooperative behavioural changes based on incomplete information. In this paper, we use evolving mask recommendations in the United States as an example to analyse the ethical importance and practical demonstration of trustworthiness in pandemic messaging and decision-making. We argue that responsible public health interventions in the time of uncertainties requires explicit intersecting ethical considerations both in action and (...) in communication to promote trustworthiness. First, as public health decisions have to be made in the face of incomplete and evolving data, health officials need to exhibit competence while committing to epistemic humility. They can explain the methods used in making and updating mask recommendations as well as explicitly acknowledge the need to incorporate sociocultural and other contextual considerations in translating scientific data into mask recommendations. Second, officials and agencies must uphold and communicate decisional transparency as part of their effort to demonstrate accountability and promote the public’s understanding of the evolving pandemic. Third, especially since both the pandemic and mask recommendations may have disparate impact on different populations, officials should start with the fair implementation of the least restrictive measures that can help reduce harm. (shrink)

How do I know whether there are any minds beside my own? This problem of other minds in philosophy raises questions which are at the heart of all philosophical investigations--how it is that we know, what is in the mind, and whether we can be certain about any of our beliefs. In this book, Anita Avramides begins with a historical overview of the problem from the Ancient Skeptics to Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, Reid, and Wittgenstein. The second part of (...) the book investigates the views of influential contemporary philosophers such as Strawson, Davidson, Nagel and Searle. (shrink)

This article engages Axel Honneth’s recent work on Georg Lukács’ concept of reification in order to formulate a politically relevant and historically specific critique of capitalism that is applicable to theorizing contemporary democratic practice. I argue that Honneth’s attempt to reorient the critique of reification within the terms of a theory of recognition has done so at the cost of sacrificing the core of the concept, which forged a connection between the socio-political analysis of capitalist domination and an analysis of (...) the unengaged, spectatorial stance of human beings toward the world, showing how they together impede emancipatory social transformation. In order to accomplish the unfinished task of rendering the critique of reification applicable to contemporary critical theory, I seek to synthesize the advantages of Honneth’s approach, which focuses on the normative aspects of the critique of reification, with Lukács’ emphasis on the practical, political-economic dimensions of reification and the historically specific pathologies of the capitalist social form. (shrink)

New technologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation, are currently touted as, not only giving us a better picture of the structure of the brain, but also a better understanding of our thinking. As Alan Snyder demonstrates when he claims his aim is to understand the ‘architecture of thought’ by investigating the brain. Against this backdrop, I will argue that new technologies present a worrying extension of mathematical natural science into the domain of human affairs. Extrapolating (...) upon Heidegger, I will put forward that neuroscientific experiments force thinking to conform to the mathematical conception of nature, rather than reveal something about the ‘true’ nature of our thinking. In a time when the expansion of mathematical natural science threatens to reduce every domain to that which is quantifiable, I will conclude by suggesting that the responsibility of the philosopher is to question the presuppositions of modern science and psychology.Nuevas tecnologías como la imagen de resonancia magnética funcional y la estimulación magnética transcranial se consideran presumiblemente capaces de darnos no solo una mejor imagen de nuestro cerebro, sino también una mejor comprensión de nuestro pensamiento, tal como demuestra Alan Snyder cuando afirma que su objetivo es entender la “arquitectura del pensamiento” mediante la investigación del cerebro. Contra este marco general, argumentaré que las nuevas tecnologías nos presentan una preocupante extensión de la ciencia natural matemática al dominio de los asuntos humanos. Extrapolando a partir de Heidegger, propondré que los experimentos neurocientíficos fuerzan al pensamiento a conformarse a la concepción matemática de la naturaleza en vez de revelar algo sobre la verdadera naturaleza de nuestro pensamiento. Nos encontramos en un momento en que o la expansión de la ciencia natural matemática amenaza con reducir todos los dominios a lo que es cuantificable. Concluiré sugiriendo que la responsabilidad del filósofo es cuestionar los presupuestos de la ciencia moderna y de la psicología. (shrink)

The paper evaluates Christopher Hookway's claim that individual epistemic vice can enhance the value of collective epistemic virtue. I suggest that this claim can be defended on the grounds of a dynamic account of collective intentional properties that is supplemented by an account of a spontaneous ordering mechanism such as the "intangible hand". Both these accounts try to explain how individual traits integrate into collective traits by way of aggregation. In this respect, they are different from normative and summative accounts (...) of plural subjects. I argue that it is the repeatable and self-amplifying nature of character traits that calls for a dynamic account of collective virtues. With regard to epistemic virtues and their role in the acquisition of knowledge I hold that their dynamic and self-amplifying character warrants their reliability, since it is this character that bottoms out in repeated acts of epistemally correct behavior that constitute a 'responsible practice'. The successful appliance of the latter amplifies the attitude it origins from. If epistemic virtues construed along these lines are attributed to collectives, a dynamic aggregate account supplemented by an account of an "intan-gible hand" device might explain how an aggregate of virtuous efforts of individuals can not only absorb a certain amount of vice but be even enhanced by the 'spice' of some non-intentional epistemically vicious side effects of epistemically virtuous en- deavor. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to evaluate the notion of collective guilt feeling both in the light of research in affectivity and in collective intentionality. The paper is divided into an introduction and three main sections. Section 1) highlights relevant features of guilt‐family emotions such as the relation between feeling guilt and objective guilt, the relation between feeling guilt and its content, and the relation between feeling guilt and the ‘self’. Moreover, the distinction between feeling guilt and feeling (...) regret is given due attention. Section 2) examines Margaret Gilbert's arguments in favor of a collectivist view of collective guilt feeling , according to which groups do genuinely feel guilt. Against the collectivist position I argue for an individualist ‘membership account’ of collective guilt feeling in terms of individual members' we‐feeling of guilt. The membership account of collective guilt feeling is vindicated on grounds of a naturalist and non‐judgmentalist understanding of emotions, as well as on the logic of personal pronouns. It combines individualism regarding the subject of the feeling with collectivism regarding the irreducibility of we‐feelings and provides, as I further argue, the required moral force attributed to collective guilt feeling. The concern of section 3) is the question of the appropriate emotional response to collective wrongdoing. I argue against the view that group members are categorically ‘committed to feel guilt as a body’ for wrongdoings committed by the group. Given that individual members often do not participate in their groups' wrongdoings, it seems unjust to impose a requirement for feeling guilt upon them. I suggest that in a general account of the appropriate assessment of collective wrongdoing, feeling regret is the better candidate than feeling guilt for the role of the minimally required emotional response.For us collectively to feel guilt over our action A is for us to be jointly committed to feeling guilt as a body over our action A. [. . .] The parties [. . .] constitute, as far as possible, a single subject of guilt feelings .[A] collective cannot respond affectively [. . .], only its constitutive members can. The lack of an affective counter‐response is troubling, because the efficacy of responses of accountability partially depends upon affect. The response of shame, guilt, and regret help to register the significance of the harm. (shrink)

Ausgehend von der Kritik einer fehlenden psychologisch informierten Subjekttheorie als Grundlage der Theorie Epistemischer Ungerechtigkeiten von Miranda Fricker wird der Begriff der Dissoziation als sozialphilosophisches Kriterium eingeführt. Die philosophische Technik der Dissoziation wird im Verhältnis zum psychologischen Verständnis des Begriffs diskutiert. Es wird die These vertreten, dass dissoziative Mechanismen und Phänomene innerpsychische und kollektive Prozesse miterklären können, die zur Genese und Aufrechterhaltung epistemischer Ungerechtigkeiten sowie insbesondere zur Persistenz von Ideologien beitragen.

The privacy of the dead is an interesting area of concern for bioethicists. There is a legal doctrine that the dead can't have privacy rights, but also a body of contrary law ascribing privacy rights to the deceased and kin in relation to the deceased. As women's abortion privacy is under assault by American courts and legislatures, the implications of ascribing privacy rights to embryos and fetuses is more important than ever. Caution is called for in this domain.

Ethics applications to conduct research with children who have experienced domestic violence will frequently raise a red flag to ethics committees about the potential for risk and re-traumatization. On the other hand, such sensitive research can enable a hidden, marginalized population to have their voices heard. It can deliver findings about children’s lives that can inform otherwise adult-centric research, policy and practice initiatives. The authors highlight ethical concerns and practical solutions using examples from domestic violence, family law and child abuse (...) research with children. Ethical planning is explored according to methodologies, context and whether the violence has been named. Also discussed are consent procedures, confidentiality and the development of protocols for disclosure, distress, safety and risk assessment, which support ethical and safe research with children. (shrink)

La metáfora del teatro no sólo aparece en el título del _Teatro crítico universal_ (1726–1739) de Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, sino también fue aducida por Pierre Bayle en su _Projet et fragmens d’un dictionaire critique _(1692). Es cierto que, a principios de la Edad Moderna, la metáfora del teatro podía emplearse y se empleaba en multitud de contextos y con fines muy diversos. Sin embargo, la combinación de teatro y error, tal y como se da tanto en Bayle como en Feijoo, (...) merece un examen más detenido. Se muestra cómo el _Theatrum vitae humanae_ (1565) de Theodor Zwinger, que es el texto en el que Bayle afirma basar su _Dictionnaire_, introduce una noción de teatro que no se centra en el escenario sino en el auditorio. Esto es significativo tanto para las estrategias de escritura de Bayle como para las de Feijoo, ya que apunta a la gestión de vastos cuerpos de conocimiento y, en última instancia, a la citacionalidad de ambos proyectos. Al mismo tiempo, sitúa al lector frente a la sabiduría tradicional y prepara así un espacio para el modo emergente de la crítica – por algunos caracterizado como escepticismo – que informa los proyectos de ambos autores. (shrink)

The essays in this volume present versions of feminism that are explicitly liberal, or versions of liberalism that are explicitly feminist. By bringing together some of the most respected and well-known scholars in mainstream political philosophy today, Amy R. Baehr challenges the reader to reconsider the dominant view that liberalism and feminism are 'incompatible.'.

The Gricean account of language is at the center of much current work in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. Anita Avramides maintains that Grice's paradigm can be used to defend very different conceptions of mind and of meaning. In this clearly argued book she describes Grice's analysis of meaning and proposes two interpretations of it, one reductive and one nonreductive. Much current work in cognitive science assumes that the content of words and thoughts can be (...) explained in naturalistic terms. A leading idea (advanced mainly by Stephen Schiffer and Brian Loar) is that the naturalistic account of content will proceed in two stages: a reduction of the semantic features of word; to the contents of propositional attitudes and then a reduction of the latter to physical or functional notions. The appeal of Grice's work on meaning to this two stage reductionist strategy is that Gricean definitions seem to provide the only way of reducing the semantic to the psychological, a reduction that is required for a naturalistic account of intentionality. While Avramides defends the method of analysis as one suited to the concept of meaning, she rejects a reductive interpretation of the analysis. She argues that any attempt to reduce the semantic to the psychological leads to a mistaken conception of mind. She exposes the assumptions behind the reductive interpretation and offers fresh and original arguments for the antireductionist position. Against the reductive Gricean she defends the idea that there is a deep epistemological symmetry between semantic and propositional attitude notions, a result of which is that semantically characterized linguistic behavior is central to our concept of belief. Anita Avramides is Lecturer in Philosophy at The Queens College, The University of Oxfor. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Die Forderung nach Transparenz gehört zu den zentralen Schlagworten der politischen Gegenwart. Während Anita Möllering die Transparenz-Forderung im Sinne der Piraten-Partei aber vor allem an die politischen Akteure adressiert und auf demokratische Verfahren bezieht, diskutiert Claus Leggewie insbesondere die Kehrseiten dieser basisdemokratischen Forderung. Zentraler Widerspruch ist aus dieser Perspektive die Fixierung der Piraten-Partei auf den gläsernen Staat, während sich die Benutzer sozialer Medien der Intransparenz ihrer privat-kommerziellen Betreiber kaum kritisch stellen. German The call for transparency is one of the (...) main slogans of the political present. While Anita Möllering, following the agenda of the “Piraten-Partei”, mostly addresses the demand for transparency to political actors and relates it to democratic procedures, Claus Leggewie discusses the downsides of this fundamentally democratic demand. From this point of view, the central conflict concerns the fixation of the “Piraten-Partei” on a transparent state, while the users of social media hardly reflect on the intransparency of its private commercial operators in a critical way. (shrink)

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has garnered tremendous attention across a range of sectors, including health care. AI is a comprehensive term, broadly defined as computational machines making decisions and performing tasks that previously required human intelligence or cognition. There are high expectations of what AI can do; enthusiasts sometimes refer to it as a central pillar of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with an impact on humanity as profound as that of the steam power engine or electricity. Building on (...) the Third Industrial Revolution (or Digital Revolution) that began in the middle of the twentieth century and was characterized by the spread of automation and digitization through the use of electronics, computers, and communication technologies (e.g., the internet), the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by a fusion of advancing technologies in AI, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), genetic engineering, and quantum computing. These technologies blend physical production and operations with smart digital technologies, promising to transform the operation, management, and governance of every industry, including health care. (shrink)

Cet article s’inscrit dans la continuité des études sur l’utilisation des corpus oraux comme ressource didactique en français langue étrangère. Il présente les défis sous-jacents à la construction d’un exercice sous format numérique à partir de l’expression polysémique genre à l’oral. L’exercice a été développé dans le cadre du projet de recherche appliquée DiCoi (Digitalisation – Corpus – Interaction), dont le but est de soutenir le développement de la compétence d’interaction orale de jeunes en formation professionnelle de métiers manuels. L’effet (...) des interventions est mesuré à l’aide de feedback, mais aussi de la collecte d’interactions orales libres enregistrées sous format audio. La réception de l’exercice est généralement positive, mais l’analyse du phénomène dans le corpus d’interaction entre allophones révèle la difficulté d’établir un lien clair entre input et output. Néanmoins, une didactisation soigneuse du matériel authentique semble rendre les phénomènes cibles saillants. (shrink)

Is there any reason not to spy on other people as necessary to get the facts straight, especially if you can put the facts you uncover to good use? To “spy” is secretly to monitor or investigate another's beliefs, intentions, actions, omissions, or capacities, especially as revealed in otherwise concealed or confidential conduct, communications and documents. By definition, spying involves secret, covert activity, though not necessarily lies, fraud or dishonesty. Nor does spying necessarily involve the use of special equipment, such (...) as a tape recorder or high-powered binoculars. Use of a third party agent, such as a “private eye” or Central Intelligence Agency operative is not necessary for surveillance to count as spying. Spying is morally troublesome both because it violates privacy norms and because it relies on secrecy and, perhaps, nefarious deception. Contemporary technologies of data collection make secret, privacy-invading surveillance easy and nearly irresistible. For every technology of confidential personal communication - telephone, mobile phone, computer email - there are one or more counter-technologies of eavesdropping. But covert surveillance conducted by amateur and professional spies still includes old-fashioned techniques of stealth, trickery and deception known a half century ago: shadowing by car, peeking at letters and diaries, donning disguises, breaking and entering, taking photographs, and tape recording conversations. The ethical examination of spying cannot be reduced to a conversation about reigning in the mischief potential of twenty-first century technology. We do need to concern ourselves with what tomorrow's spies will do with nanotechnology, but plenty of spying is possible with the time-tested techniques of the Baby Boomers, or even, for that matter, the Victorians. The philosophical problem I wish to consider here is the ethical limits of spying on others, when the reasons for spying are good. I explore the plausibility of three interrelated ideas. The first idea is one I will call the anti-spying principle: spying on other adults is prima facie unethical. The second idea is an exception to the anti-spying principle: spying on others is ethically permissible, even mandatory, in certain situations, where the ends are good. The third and final idea is a constraint on exceptions to the anti-spying principle: where spying is ethically permitted or required, there are ethical limits on the methods of spying. The virtuous spy will violate privacy and transparency norms, of course; but he or she will, to the extent possible, continue to act with respect for the moral autonomy and for the moral and legal interests of the investigative target. (shrink)

While the effects of COVID-19 are being felt globally, the pandemic disproportionately affects lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) by exacerbating existing global health disparities. In this article, we illustrate how intersecting upstream social determinants of global health form a disparity pathway that compromises LMICs’ ability to respond to the pandemic. We consider pre-existing disease burden and baseline susceptibility, limited disease prevention resources, and unequal access to basic and specialized health care, essential drugs, and clinical trials. Recognizing that ongoing and underlying (...) disparity issues will require long-term correction efforts, this pathway approach is nonetheless helpful to inform ethical responses to this global pandemic. It can facilitate international cooperation during the pandemic to reduce the disparate burdens among different regions without imposing significant burden on any particular contributor. The pathway approach allows international stakeholders in various social positions to respond to different components of the pathway based on their respective strengths and resources to help break the cycle of global health inequity. Guided by the ethical principles of relational and pragmatic solidarity, we argue for a coordinated global division of labor such that different stakeholders can collaborate to foster equitable healthcare access during this pandemic. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

As a U.S. civil rights policy, affirmative action commonly denotes race-conscious and result-oriented efforts by private and public officials to correct the unequal distribution of economic opportunity and education attributed to slavery, segregation, poverty and racism. Opponents argue that affirmative action (1) violates ideals of color-blind public policies, offending moral principles of fairness and constitutional principles of equality and due process; (2) has proven to be socially and politically divisive; (3) has not made things better; (4) mainly benefits middle-class, wealthy (...) and foreign-born blacks; (4) stigmatizes its beneficiaries; and (5) compromises the self-esteem and self-respect of beneficiaries who know that they have been awarded preferential treatment. By way of a thought experiment, imagine that after decades of public policy and experimentation, the United States public finally came to agree: affirmative action is morally and legally wrong. Employing such a thought experiment, this essay by a beneficiary of affirmative action—written in response to James Sterba’s Affirmative Action for the Future (2009)—examines duties of moral repair and the possibility that the past beneficiaries of affirmative action owe apologies, compensation or some other highly personal form of corrective accountability. Beneficiaries of affirmative action have experienced woundedness and moral insecurity. Indeed, the practice of affirmative action comes with a psychology, a set of psychological benefits and burdens whose moral logic those of us who believe in our own fallibility—as much as we believe in the justice of what we have received and conferred on others—should address. (shrink)

Foucault and modern medicineModernity as a concept or ideal, resulting from the age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution gave hope of a better future and new possibilities. To be modern means an ‘enlightened’ individual and society, welcoming change and development. In this paper, I will discuss Foucault's analysis (1973) of problematics in medicine in eighteenth century France. Three themes prominent in the text are: ‘the birth of the clinic’, ‘the clinical gaze’ and the power‐knowledge relationship. Three problematics identified in (...) modern medicine by Foucault and which are particularly relevant to twentieth century medicine are: (i) the extension of the clinical gaze from the individual body to the wider population; (ii) the increasing medical intervention and use of technology in fundamental life processes; and (iii) the relationship between society and medicine. I will argue that Foucault's analysis is fraught with ambiguities. It is useful, however, for establishing an explanation for medicine today and for presenting a particular interpretation of modernity. (shrink)