R. S. Peters, C. A. Mace; VII—Emotions and the Category of Passivity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 117–142, h.

R. S. Peters, C. A. Mace; VII—Emotions and the Category of Passivity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 117–142, h.

Background. Decisions to test, enrol and disclose HIV status are among the ethical challenges that may influence adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and HIV care and treatment in adolescents living with HIV. In the Tanzanian setting, how parental perceptions of ethical issues affect adolescents’ adherence to HIV care and treatment is not well known.Objective. To explore parental perceptions of ethical issues in adolescent HIV care and treatment. Methods. The study employed a descriptive qualitative exploratory design and was conducted at Temeke (...) Regional Referral Hospital in Dar es Salaam Care and Treatment Centre (CTC) in the Outpatient Department (OPD). The study population were parents and non-parent caregivers of HIV-infected adolescents 10 - 19 years of age. A total of 16 persons participated in semi-structured interviews after their consent was obtained. All interviews were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim in Swahili and back-translated into English. An inductive content analysis was used, and standards of qualitative rigour applied. Results. Three qualitative themes emerged: balancing adolescents’ autonomy with parents’ desire to protect their children; parental dilemmas regarding disclosure of adolescents’ HIV status; and parental reasons for delayed disclosure.Conclusion. Participants perceived that parental authority should override adolescents’ autonomy in HIV care and treatment. Disclosure of HIV status to adolescents is a challenge to parents. Delays in disclosure often occur because parents feel guilty and because they have fears of rejection by their adolescent children. (shrink)

The neural basis of human memory is incredibly complex. We argue that the diversity of neural systems underlying various forms of memory suggests that any discussion of enhancing ‘memory’ per se is too broad, thus obfuscating the biopolitical debate about human enhancement. Memory can be differentiated into at least four major systems with largely dissociable neural substrates. We outline each system, and discuss both the practical and the ethical implications of these diverse neural substrates. In practice, distinct neural bases imply (...) the possibility, and likely the necessity, of specific approaches for the safe and effective enhancement of various memory systems. In the debate over the ethical and social implications of enhancement technologies, this fine-grained perspective clarifies—and may partially mitigate—certain common concerns in enhancement debates, including issues related to safety, fairness, coercion, and authenticity. While many researchers certainly appreciate the neurobiological complexity of memory, the political debate tends to revolve around a monolithic one-size-fits-all conception. The overall project—exploring how human enhancement technologies affect society – stands to benefit from a deeper appreciation of memory’s neurobiological diversity. (shrink)

Psychiatric disorders present distinct clinical challenges which are partly attributable to their multifactorial aetiology and the absence of laboratory tests that can be used to confirm diagnosis or predict risk. Psychiatric disorders are highly heritable, but also polygenic, with genetic risk conferred by interactions between thousands of variants of small effect that can be summarized in a polygenic risk score. We discuss four areas in which the use of polygenic risk scores in psychiatric research and clinical contexts could have ethical (...) implications. First, there is concern that clinical use of polygenic risk scores may exacerbate existing health inequities. Second, research findings regarding polygenic risk could be misinterpreted in stigmatising or discriminatory ways. Third, there are concerns associated with testing minors as well as eugenics concerns elicited by prenatal polygenic risk testing. Fourth, potential challenges that could arise with the feedback and interpretation of high polygenic risk for a psychiatric disorder would require consideration. While there would be extensive overlap with the challenges of feeding back genetic findings in general, the potential clinical use of polygenic risk scoring warrants discussion in its own right, given the recency of this possibility. To this end, we discuss how lay interpretations of risk and genetic information could intersect. Consideration of these factors would be necessary for ensuring effective and constructive communication and interpretation of polygenic risk information which, in turn, could have implications for the uptake of any therapeutic recommendations. Recent advances in polygenic risk scoring have major implications for its clinical potential, however, care should be taken to ensure that communication of polygenic risk does not feed into problematic assumptions regarding mental disorders or support reductive interpretations. (shrink)

During the last twelvemonth we have been engaged in finally preparing for press the first volume of our text of Livy in the Bibliotheca Classica Oxoniensis, and we now desire to submit beforehand to the judgement of scholars some of the chief alterations in the current text that we have been led to adopt. It will be seen that some proportion of them consist of little more than a defence of the MS tradition; and where we have proposed changes of (...) our own, we have, we believe, rigorously confined ourselves not merely to such suggestions as can be readily reconciled with the reading of at least one good manuscript, but to such as provide in each case a tenable explanation of the origin of all the variants in all the MSS that we have consulted. In several difficult places we have become persuaded that corruption has arisen through slight and accountable dislocations of order, and in a still larger number from the incorporation of marginal or interlinear glosses not differing in character from those which still appear in great numbers in all the MSS of the 9th to the 12th centuries, but which have not forced their way into the text. A typical example will be found in our note on V. 2. 8. (shrink)

Restitere primo obstinatis animis; deinde ut obtinentes locum †uires ferebant† audent ultro gradum inferre.

This essay results from a common interest in the history of emotions shared by an academic with appointments in philosophy and psychiatry (Charland) and a literary historian (White). Where our interests converge is in the early modern concept of 'the passions,' as explanatory of what we now call mental illness. The task we have set ourselves is to see how this might: (a) be exemplified in a 'case study' of the dramatic revelation of Leontes's jealousy in the first half of (...) William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, and his 'cure' which takes sixteen years. Both events have troubled literary critics as implausible, lacking in realistic motivation, and clumsy as narrative devices, but can be explained in terms of theories of the passions ; and (b) open up a greater, modern understanding of irrational, pathological states, their onset and termination, by using as an explanatory model the early modern understanding of passions as revived and refined in the nineteenth century by Théodule Ribot. Janus-like, this chapter faces into the past and the future (our present) via a play written in 1610 that is still performed to receptive audiences today. We hope to show that the theory can illuminate a playtext, and that the play can revivify the theory, and to contend that historical analysis can shed light on modern clinical problems. The particular historical distinction which lies at the heart of our approach derives from early modern terminology offered by Thomas Wright in his book, The Passions of the Minde in Generall (first published in 1601; corrected, enlarged and augmented in 1604), and presented in more modern fashion in the nineteenth century by Théodule Ribot, in his La Psycholgie des sentiments * We dedicate this essay to Philippa Maddern, whose inspiration has generated so much inter-disciplinary research in the history of emotions and has brought so many like-minded scholars into fertile contact—in our cases, linking Western Ontario and Western Australia. (shrink)

Avoiding whinges from various and potentially conflicting stakeholders is a major challenge for sustainable development and for the identification of sustainability scenarios or policies for biodiversity and ecosystem services. It turns out that independently complying with whinge thresholds and constraints of these stakeholders is not sufficient because dynamic ecological-economic interactions and uncertainties occur. Thus more demanding no whinge standards are needed. In this paper, we first argue that these new boundaries can be endogenously exhibited with the mathematical concepts of viability (...) kernel and viable controls. Second, it is shown how these no whinge kernels have components, such as harvesting of resources, that should remain within safe corridor while some other components, in particular biodiversity, have only lower conservation limits. Thus, using radar charts, we show how this no whinge kernels can take the shape of a tree that we name viability tree. These trees of viability capture the idea that the unbounded renewal potential of biodiversity combined with a bounded use of the different ecosystem services are crucial ingredients for the sustainability of socio-ecosystems and the design of no whinge policies reconciling the different stakeholders involved. (shrink)

Neuroscientists are searching for the engram within the conceptual framework established by John Locke's theory of mind. This framework was elaborated before the development of information theory, before the development of information processing machines and the science of computation, before the discovery that molecules carry hereditary information, before the discovery of the codon code and the molecular machinery for editing the messages written in this code and translating it into transcription factors that mark abstract features of organic structure such as (...) anterior and distal. The search for the engram needs to abandon Locke's conceptual framework and work within a framework informed by these developments. The engram is the medium by which information extracted from past experience is transmitted to the computations that inform future behavior. The information-conveying symbols in the engram are rapidly generated in the course of computations, which implies that they are molecules. (shrink)

Objectives: To report the attitudes and opinions of subjects in US clinical trials about whether or not, and why, they should receive post-trial access (PTA) to the trial drug, care and information. Design: Focus groups, short self-administered questionnaires. Setting: Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Oklahoma City. Participants: Current and recent subjects in clinical trials, primarily for chronic diseases. Results: 93 individuals participated in 10 focus groups. Many thought researchers, sponsors, health insurers and others share obligations to facilitate PTA to the trial drug, (...) if it benefited the subject, or to a therapeutic equivalent. Some thought PTA obligations include providing transition care (referrals to non-trial physicians or other trials, limited follow-up, short-term drug supply) or care for long-term adverse events. Others held, in contrast, that there are no PTA obligations regarding drugs or care. However, there was agreement that former subjects should receive information (drug name, dosage received, market approval date, long-term adverse effects, trial results). Participants frequently appealed to health need, cost, relationships, reciprocity, free choice and sponsor self-interest to support their views. Many of their reasons overlapped with those commonly discussed by bioethicists. Conclusion: Many participants in US trials for chronic conditions thought there are obligations to facilitate PTA to the trial drug at a “fair” price; these views were less demanding than those of non-US subjects in other studies. However, our participants’ views about informational obligations were broader than those of other subjects and many bioethicists. Our results suggest that the PTA debate should expand beyond the trial drug and aggregate results. (shrink)

Plutarch's essay de fortuna Romanorum has attracted divergent judgements. Ziegler dismissed it as ‘eine nicht weiter ernst zu nehmende rhetorische Stilübung’. By Flacelière it was hailed as ‘une ébauche de méditation sur le prodigieux destin de Rome’. It is time to consider the work afresh and to discover whether there is common ground between these two views. Rather than offering a general appreciation, my treatment will take the work chapter by chapter, considering points of interest as they arise. This method (...) will enable us to compare what Plutarch says on particular subjects and themes in de fort. Rom. with what he says or does not say about them elsewhere. We shall thus be able to see clearly that for the most part the ideas he presents in the essay correspond with his thoughts about the rôle of fortune expressed in more serious writing, and that, where there is no correspondence, this is attributable to the rhetorical background. I do not intend to address directly the frequently discussed but insoluble question of whether we have in de fort. Rom. only one of two original works, that is whether there was once a de virtute Romanorum which Plutarch composed or answered. De fort. Rom. itself in fact gives almost as much prominence to άρετή as to τúχη, and their competing roles will be carefully evaluated. Nor do I look at the dating of the work. (shrink)