The dual-use issue is often framed as a series of paralyzing ‘dilemmas’ facing the scientific community as well as institutions which support innovation. While this conceptualization of the dual-use issue can be useful in certain contexts its usefulness is more limited when reflecting on the governance and politics of the dual-use issue. Within this paper, key shortcomings of the dilemma framing are outlined. It is argued that many of the issues raised in the most recent debates about ‘dual-use’ bird flu (...) research remain unresolved. This includes questions about the trajectories of certain lines of research, as well as broader trends in the practice and governance of science. This leads to difficult questions about current approaches to the dual-use issue within the US, as well as internationally. (shrink)

"In 2003 the Getty Museum, which holds a collection of about 240 Weston prints, hosted a colloquium on the photographer. This volume in the In Focus series records remarks by the author, Brett Abbott, along with those of six other participants: William Clift, Amy Conger, David Featherstone, Weston Naef, David Travis, and Jennifer Watts. Context for their conversation is provided by the author's introduction, plate texts, and chronology. Approximately fifty of Weston's images demonstrate why his work continues to resonate (...) with a contemporary public and serves as a model for a host of photographers active today."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Edward Harold Fulcher Swain (1883?1970) developed a unique idea about the importance of forests, advocating the creation of a new society based upon forests, and he pursued policies to implement his unique vision of forestry when he served as the Director of Queensland's Forestry Board from 1918 to 1924 and the Forestry Commissioner for New South Wales from 1935 to 1948. Swain's beliefs developed out of a combination of his Australian experiences and connections with foresters in the British Empire and (...) America. When he could not convince Australian elites about the need to create a forest-based society, he asked foresters at the 1947 Empire Forestry Conference in London to assert the primacy of forestry in land management in the British Empire. Many foresters positively received parts of Swain's argument, but his ideas could never be fully implemented in the British Empire because of the dominance of agrarian doctrines of development in post-Second World War colonial planning and the rapid process of decolonization. Swain's life sheds light onto current debates among historians about the origin and legacy of forestry in Australia and the British Empire. His ideas, many that parallel the basic tenets of modern environmentalism, require historians to rethink the relationship between Empire forestry and environmentalism. (shrink)

This paper has three main aims. The first is to provide a critical assessment of two rival concepts of suffering, that proposed by Cassell and that proposed in this journal by van Hooft. The second aim of the paper is to sketch a more plausible concept of suffering, one which derives from a Wittgensteinian view of linguistic meaning. This more plausible concept is labeled an ‘intuitive concept’. The third aim is to assess the prospects for scientific understanding of suffering.

In this paper the authors argue that research ethics committees should not be paternalistic by rejecting research that poses risk to people competent to decide for themselves. However it is important they help to ensure valid consent is sought from potential recruits and protect vulnerable people who cannot look after their own best interests. The authors first describe the tragic deaths of Jesse Gelsinger and Ellen Roche. They then discuss the following claims to support their case: competent individuals are epistemologically (...) and ethically in the best position to say which risks are reasonable for them, so RECs should be no more restrictive than the “normal” constraints on people taking risks with themselves; RECs do not judge individual competence ; individual liberty is mostly limited by what serves the public interest, and RECs do not determine public interest; RECs may have a paternalistic role in preventing exploitation of competent people vulnerable to the use of incentives, and in protecting the interests of incompetent people; however, the moral and political authority of RECs has not been established in this respect. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The practice of prenatal screening for disability is sometimes objected to because of the hurt and offence such practices may cause to people currently living with disabilities. This objection is commonly termed “the expressivist objection”. In response to the objection it is standardly claimed that disabilities are analogous to illnesses. And just as it would be implausible to suppose reduction of the incidence of illnesses such as flu sends a negative message to ill people, so it is not plausible to (...) suppose prevention of disability sends a negative message to disabled people. The expressivist objection hinges, however, upon a view of the relationship between disability and self identity which sees disability as part of the identity of the disabled person, in a way in which illnesses such as flu cannot be. This possibility is generally not considered in critiques of the expressivist objection. In this paper, an “identity claim” to the effect that disabilities can be identity constituting is accepted and the force of the expressivist argument is reconsidered in the light of its acceptance. It is concluded that even when such an identity claim is accepted, the expressivist objection is still not morally compelling. (shrink)

An almost unbelievable amount of false philosophy has arisen through not realizing what ‘existence’ means…. [It] rests upon the notion that existence is, so to speak, a property that you can attribute to things, and that the things that exist have the property of existence and the things that do not exist do not. That is rubbish . I have dared to puncture several metaphysical balloons and nothing came out of them but hot air.

Jansen and Wall suggest a new way of defending hard paternalism in clinical research. They argue that non-therapeutic research exposing people to more than minimal risk should be banned on egalitarian grounds: in preventing poor decision-makers from making bad decisions, we will promote equality of welfare. We argue that their proposal is flawed for four reasons.First, the idea of poor decision-makers is much more problematic than Jansen and Wall allow. Second, pace Jansen and Wall, it may be practicable for regulators (...) to uncover the values that a potential research participant holds when agreeing to enter a research project, so their claim that we must ban such research projects for all if we are to ban them for poor decision-makers looks to be unmotivated. Third, there seem to be cases where the liberty to enter the sort of research project Jansen and Wall discuss is morally weighty, and arguably should outweigh concerns of egalitarian distribution. Fourth, banning certain types of research, which seem on the face of it to offer an unfavourable risk-benefit ratio, would have unwelcome consequences for all clinical research, which Jansen and Wall do not recognize. (shrink)

The field of neuroimaging has reached a watershed. Brain imaging research has been the source of many advances in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive science over the last decade, but recent critiques and emerging trends are raising foundational issues of methodology, measurement, and theory. Indeed, concerns over interpretation of brain maps have created serious controversies in social neuroscience, and, more important, point to a larger set of issues that lie at the heart of the entire brain mapping enterprise. In this volume, (...) leading scholars -- neuroimagers and philosophers of mind -- reexamine these central issues and explore current controversies that have arisen in cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, computer science, and signal processing. The contributors address both statistical and dynamical analysis and modeling of neuroimaging data and interpretation, discussing localization, modularity, and neuroimagers' tacit assumptions about how these two phenomena are related; controversies over correlation of fMRI data and social attributions ; and the standard inferential design approach in neuroimaging. Finally, the contributors take a more philosophical perspective, considering the nature of measurement in brain imaging, and offer a framework for novel neuroimaging data structures. Contributors: William Bechtel, Bharat Biswal, Matthew Brett, Martin Bunzl, Max Coltheart, Karl J. Friston, Joy J. Geng, Clark Glymour, Kalanit Grill-Spector, Stephen José Hanson, Trevor Harley, Gilbert Harman, James V. Haxby, Rik N. Henson, Nancy Kanwisher, Colin Klein, Richard Loosemore, Sébastien Meriaux, Chris Mole, Jeanette A. Mumford, Russell A. Poldrack, Jean-Baptiste Poline, Richard C. Richardson, Alexis Roche, Adina L. Roskies, Pia Rotshtein, Rebecca Saxe, Philipp Sterzer, Bertrand Thirion, Edward Vul The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

In this article we examine ethical aspects of the involvement of children in clinical research, specifically those who are incapable of giving informed consent to participate. The topic is, of course, not a new one in medical ethics but there are some tensions in current guidelines that, in our view, need to be made explicit and which need to be responded to by the relevant official bodies. In particular, we focus on tensions between the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki, (...) and the guidance offered by the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health , and the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences. We conclude with a call for these organisations to make their guidance explicit in relation to the World Medical Association Declaration. (shrink)

This paper examines one particular justification for the screening and termination of embryos/fetuses which possess genetic features known to cause disability. The particular case is that put forward in several places by John Harris. He argues that the obligation to prevent needless suffering justifies the prevention of the births of disabled neonates. The paper begins by rehearsing Harris's case. Then, drawing upon claims advanced in a recent paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics, it is subjected to critical scrutiny, focusing (...) on Harris's “suffering claim” .1 It is argued that the suffering claim must be false if understood as an empirical claim. And, even if understood as a conceptual truth, it mistakenly assimilates the concepts of harm and suffering. Finally, again focusing on Harris's recent work in this area, his characterisation of disability as a “harmed condition” is shown not to apply in the case of at least some moderate forms of intellectual disability. (shrink)

In the years 2020–2021, journalists, lawyers, scholars, and civil society actors noticed an unusual spike in the refusal of francophone African immigrants in Québec, Canada. While Immigration, refugee and citizenship Canada’s systemic racism problem were already documented, the novelty appeared to be how standardized and sometimes, “nonsensical” the reasons given to many of the applicants were. This eventually prompted a lawsuit against IRCC in which it was revealed that a new piece of software called “Chinook” had been deployed since 2018, (...) approximately at the same time application refusal started spiking. Online and media-fueled speculations culminated in a broad debate about whether Chinook was an artificial intelligence-based technology. Such controversy, for instance, unfolded during parliamentary consultations in which it was finally disclosed that Chinook was not AI per se., but more of a half-baked automated interface. The present article aims to understand how the performative ambiguity of Chinook informs on the progressive becoming of the Canadian Federal state and its immigration control practices in the current Machine Learning hype. Furthermore, it seeks to understand how the interlacing of public–private partnership, in which the private sector is mobilized to produce AI-driven technology, recursively transforms the exercise of governance and governmentality. We argue, through the Chinook controversy and its unfolding, that there is a shift occurring where AI becomes ever more central in statecraft “anarchitecture” and cybernetic adaptability. (shrink)

In his classic 1936 paper Tarski sought to motivate his definition of logical consequence by appeal to the inference form: P(0), P(1), . . ., P(n), . . . therefore ∀nP(n). This is prima facie puzzling because these inferences are seemingly first-order and Tarski knew that Gödel had shown first-order proof methods to be complete, and because ∀nP(n) is not a logical consequence of P(0), P(1), . . ., P(n), . . . by Taski's proposed definition. An attempt to resolve (...) the puzzle due to Etchemendy is considered and rejected. A second attempt due to Gómez-Torrente is accepted as far as it goes, but it is argued that it raises a further puzzle of its own: it takes the plausibility of Tarski's claim that his definition captures our common concept of logical consequence to depend upon our common concept being a reductive conception. A further interpretation of what Tarski had in mind when he offered the example is proposed, using materials well known to Tarski at the time. It is argued that this interpretation makes the motivating example independent of reductive definitions which take natural numbers to be higher-order set theoretic entities, and it also explains why he did not regard the distinction between defined and primitive terms as pressing, as was the distinction between logical and nonlogical terms. (shrink)

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was trained as a philosopher and steeped in the thought of Hegel and German idealism, but turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties towards politics, economics and history. It is for his these subjects Marx is best known and in which his work and ideas shaped the very nature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, Marx's engagement with philosophy runs through most of his work, especially in his philosophy of history and in moral and political philosophy. (...) In this outstanding introduction to Marx's philosophy Jaime Edwards and Brian Leiter begin with an overview of Marx's life and intellectual development, before examining and assessing the following important topics: Marx's theory of history: Hegel, dialectics, teleology, materialism functionalism and the causal explanation of historical change economics, history and the transition from communism to capitalism ideology, morality and religion human nature, alienation and the good life for human beings Marx's legacy and influence, including Western Marxism and the Frankfurt School. The addition of chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary of technical terms make this an indispensable introduction to Marx's philosophy. It will also be useful to those in related disciplines such as politics, sociology, history and economics. (shrink)

In this paper the need for valid evidence of the cost-effectiveness of treatments that have not been properly evaluated, yet are already available, albeit in short supply, are examined. Such treatments cannot be withdrawn, pending proper evaluation, nor can they be made more widely available until they have been shown to be cost-effective. As a solution to this impasse the argument put forward recently by Toroyan et al is discussed. They say that randomised controlled trials of such resources could be (...) done but only if resources are randomly allocated independently of a research context. Relevant outcome data could then be collected for research, given this opportunity. We agree. We disagree with Toroyan et al on a number of points. First, they claim that no ethical issue relating to equipoise arises. We disagree and this disagreement depends on our showing that equipoise should be maintained in a relationship that they do not consider. Secondly, they say that consent to data collection is always needed. Again we disagree. Thirdly, they claim that the previous two issues are the only possible ethical issues that could arise. We argue, instead, that there is a further conflict of interests that has ethical import. (shrink)

This textbook in Medical Ethics covers most of the standard issues. Each chapter begins with detailed comments by the editors, followed by the best available articles on each topic covered.

The Alleged Turning Point in European Philosophy Existentialists, especially those who follow either Heidegger or Jaspers, find a great deal objectionable in what they variously call ‘scientism’, ‘scientific rationalism’, and ‘positivism’. In this article I shall discuss one of the alleged defects of scientific rationalism, that it recognizes only one kind of truth—the kind that existentialists call ‘objective truth’. ‘One great achievement of existential philosophy,’ writes William Barrett, ‘has been a new interpretation of the idea of truth in order to (...) point out that there are different kinds of truth, where a rigid scientific rationalism had postulated but one kind: objective scientific truth.’ Not only scientific rationalists but traditional metaphysicians from Plato to Aquinas and Hegel are judged to be equally at fault here: they too have failed to recognize any truth other than the objective variety. It was Kierkegaard who for the first time effectively challenged the assumptions shared by scientific rationalists and traditional metaphysicians. Kierkegaard, in Barrett's words, ‘had to re-open the whole question of the meaning of truth … his stand on the question may well have marked a turning point in European philosophy.’. (shrink)

Book Information Dummett: Philosophy of Language. By Karen Green. Polity Press. Cambridge. 2002. Pp. xi + 220. Hardback, £55. Paperback, £14.99.

In this paper, we respond to Andrew Avins's recent review of methods whose use he advocates in clinical trials, to make them more ethical. He recommends in particular, “unbalanced randomisation”. However, we argue that, before such a recommendation can be made, it is important to establish why unequal randomisation might offer ethical advantages over equal randomisation, other things being equal. It is important to make a pragmatic distinction between trials of treatments that are already routinely available and trials of restricted (...) treatments. We conclude that unequal randomisation could, indeed, be an ethical compromise between protecting the interests of participants and those of society. (shrink)

Book Information Michael Dummett. By Bernhard Weiss.\nAcumen. Chesham. 2002. Pp. ix + 197. Paperback,\n{Â}\textsterling13.95.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental TraditionJeffrey EdwardsDavid Carr. The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xii + 150. Cloth, $35.00.This book presents a response to contemporary attacks on the concept of the subject. Carr investigates the historical background to the criticisms of the "Metaphysics of the Subject" that are found in French post-structuralist thought (...) and in critical theories descended from the Frankfurt School. In explaining this background, he targets the widely held assumption that the history of modern philosophy can best be understood in terms of a fundamentally unified conception of the subject and subjectivity that unfolds inevitably from Descartes and culminates in twentieth-century phenomenology and existentialism. Those who share this assumption fail to recognize the significance of what Husserl (in the Crisis of European Sciences) called the "paradox of subjectivity," which derives from the necessity of understanding the knowing subject both as a subject for the world and as an object in the world.The origins of contemporary interpretations of the metaphysics of the subject are found primarily in Heidegger's thought. Carr thus devotes the first chapter of this study to the critical assessment of Heidegger's view of modern metaphysics starting with Descartes. For Heidegger, Descartes took over the dominant concept of substance from traditional ontology and transferred it to the human subject. The Cartesian subject, then, was revealed as an underlying hypokeimenon that absorbs or overpowers the world by reducing it to the representational contents of the thinking thing. Moreover, Heidegger maintained that modern thinkers did not go beyond the reductive conception of subjectivity intrinsic to the Cartesian metaphysics of substance. This Heideggerian judgment applies to the major modern thinkers. Even Kant and Husserl figure as representatives of a tradition in which "the knowing subject takes the role of substance; everything is reduced to first properties, whether as immanent in consciousness, object for the subject, or, as in transcendental philosophy, construct and product of subjective activity" (Carr, 31).In chapters 2-4, Carr argues that the Heideggerian interpretation is inadequate with respect to Kant and Husserl. In supporting this position, Carr emphasizes the close affinities between Kant's and Husserl's conceptions of objectivity for consciousness and between their portrayals of subject and self. Specifically, Carr argues (1) that both thinkers were committed to the representationalist view of cognition that is typical of other major modern philosophers; and (2) that both presented parallel, and indeed unifiable, accounts of the relationship between the transcendental and the empirical self.The key to explaining the fundamental agreement between Kant's and Husserl's transcendental theories lies in the concept of intentionality. There are, of course, significant differences between Husserl's phenomenological method and the procedure of inquiry into the possibility conditions of objective experience that Kant follows in the Critique of Pure Reason. Still, Husserl's portrayal of the intentional character of consciousness provides the basis for understanding how Kant's account of transcendental apperception and the original synthetic unity of self-consciousness grounds a non-representationalist theory of the subject's relation to a world of objects. Husserl's portrayal of intentionality also enables us to see how Kant's concept of transcendental [End Page 609] apperception allows for a description of the empirical self as something that is part of the objective world. Conversely, the Kantian distinction between the transcendental and the empirical self, or subject, sheds light on the sense of the distinction that Husserl draws between transcendental and natural reflection. In natural reflection, I "appear to myself as an empirical subject within a world to which I relate in causal-bodily and intentional [i.e., purposive]-motivational ways" (89). On the other hand, the consciousness of self at issue in transcendental reflection involves my awareness of the meaning-constituting cognitive accomplishments by which I am consciousness of the world as the horizon of possible objects and, at the same time, as something transcendent to consciousness.It is Husserl's conception of intentionality, combined with Kant's understanding of the transcendental-empirical distinction, that allows us to grasp the full significance of the paradox... (shrink)

Tom Shakespeare’s important new book includes, among other topics, a persuasive critique of the social model of disability. A key component in his case against that model consists in an argument against the impairment/disability distinction as this is understood within the social model. The present paper focuses on the case Shakespeare makes against that distinction. Three arguments mounted by Shakespeare are summarised and responded to. It is argued that the responses adequately rebut Shakespeare’s case on this specific issue. Moreover, as (...) the engagement with Shakespeare’s argument illustrates, his claim to employ a critical realist perspective appears to be in considerable tension with the case he offers against the impairment/disability distinction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Changing Functions, Moral Responsibility, and Mental IllnessCraig Edwards (bio)Keywordsmental illness, responsibility, character, dysfunction, personhoodI thank both Wakefield and Tomasini for their illuminating comments. Both commentaries are thought provoking and warrant a full response. However, as always, space is limited and I must make the all-too-predictable apology for not addressing both commentaries in full. Wakefield's contribution more directly engages with, and challenges, my claims, and so I focus on (...) addressing his concerns.ClarificationsWakefield correctly notes that I am interested in how mental illness (and illness generally) operates to remove moral responsibility for one's actions. Despite this, it seems at several points that he and I are talking about two different, albeit related, concepts of mental illness. 'Mental illness' is used to both explain and excuse certain behaviors, but these two functions, explanatory and exculpable, do not always operate simultaneously. As we discover biological explanations for apparently immoral behaviors, the question arises as to whether the explanation should remove the immorality and liability for punishment. The 'sick role' can be divided into two aspects. One is the role of deserving and warranting medical treatment. The other is the negation of moral responsibility. Wakefield's own example, pedophilia, involves the first sense of the sick role but not the second. Wakefield's use of this example is unusual, because it deftly highlights the limitation of his HD account. Pedophilia is a mental disorder in the sense of warranting treatment, and is a mental illness under Wakefield's model, but it is not something that negates moral responsibility. There is a sense of the term 'mental illness'—an important and, as I argue, an objective sense—that is relevant to establishing one's moral responsibility for such behaviors.In addressing my account of mental illness as though it contained two distinct answers, 'mental illness as dysfunction of rational agency, or 'mental illness as moral judgment,' it is unclear whether Wakefield takes them to be conjunctive or alternative. Hence it is worth reiterating in point form the structure of my account:1. Illness involves dysfunction;2. The 'proper function' of a bodily or psychological mechanism is determined by the purpose that we impose upon that mechanism (within the constraints of our biological needs);3. Dysfunction of rational agency is necessary, but not sufficient, for 'mental illness' in the normative sense relevant to negating moral responsibility; and [End Page 105]4. The distinction between 'mental illness' (in the above sense) and the many dysfunctions of rational agency for which we are morally responsible, turns upon (objective) normative facts rather than features internal to the dysfunctions themselves.Functions and ValueWakefield misses the point when he criticizes my comment that, although bodily mechanisms are fairly uniformly valued, there is substantial historical and cross-cultural variation in the way people value personhood. He notes—accurately, but irrelevantly—that people almost always place great value on their capacity for rational agency, probably more so than many aspects of their physical health. My comment, taken in context, has nothing to do with how much people value personhood, but has everything to do with what kinds of purposes people want their mental and physical processes to achieve. A heart has the same function for a Londoner today as it did for a Japanese peasant a thousand years ago, and although it is possible for us to want it to achieve other purposes, any culture that seriously imputes a different set of vital functions on the heart is likely to be rather disappointed. By contrast, our species has experienced vast changes in the demands we make of our rational and intellectual capacities—dysfunctions like dyslexia and alcoholism were irrelevant before the availability of written communication and alcohol.Wakefield's HD account is unable to deal with the relevance of such change. The link between evolutionary function and illness is tenuous in any event. Evolutionary explanations of specific mechanisms are often untestable, simply positing some evolutionary purpose that happens to fit our understanding of what the mechanism does. If we were to discover that alcoholism evolved as a means of increasing birthrates, or (perhaps more plausibly) that anxiety disorders occur among those for whom... (shrink)