Ranging from miniaturized biological robots to organoids, multi-cellular engineered living systems (M-CELS) pose complex ethical and societal challenges. Some of these challenges, such as how to best distribute risks and benefits, are likely to arise in the development of any new technology. Other challenges arise specifically because of the particular characteristics of M-CELS. For example, as an engineered living system becomes increasingly complex, it may provoke societal debate about its moral considerability, perhaps necessitating protection from harm or recognition of positive (...) moral and legal rights, particularly if derived from cells of human origin. The use of emergence-based principles in M-CELS development may also create unique challenges, making the technology difficult to fully control or predict in the laboratory as well as in applied medical or environmental settings. In response to these challenges, we argue that the M-CELS community has an obligation to systematically address the ethical and societal aspects of research and to seek input from and accountability to a broad range of stakeholders and publics. As a newly developing field, M-CELS has a significant opportunity to integrate ethically responsible norms and standards into its research and development practices from the start. With the aim of seizing this opportunity, we identify two general kinds of salient ethical issues arising from M-CELS research, and then present a set of commitments to and strategies for addressing these issues. If adopted, these commitments and strategies would help define M-CELS as not only an innovative field, but also as a model for responsible research and engineering. (shrink)

Writing and that which it entails are the subject of countless texts by Maurice Blanchot. In particular, Blanchot has focused on the notion of the work, or more precisely on a groundlessness or an absence of the work, which he has designated from different perspectives over the course of more than half a century. In various ways, Blanchot has conceived of the work as an affirmation of its undoing. The question of narration, often about a confrontation with death, is fundamentally (...) important, as is evident for example in Blanchot’s Death Sentence, The Madness of the Day or The Instant of My Death. In a sense, it is bound up with the possibility of the work. Writing about Henry James in “The Turn of the Screw” 2 in The Book to Come, Blanchot discusses narration. What is described is indeed a certain absence of the work relating to the writer’s difficult struggle to narrate everything. I will examine Blanchot’s reading of James to expose this conception of narration centred on seizing the truth. It is apparent that Blanchot approaches the question very differently in “Narrative Voice ,” in The Infinite Conversation in which there is a decentring of the work. 3 I will show that this text as well as certain writings by Derrida make it possible to arrive at a conception of narration in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw which strongly contrasts with the one put forward by Blanchot in The Book to Come. Thus, alongside Blanchot’s reading of The Turn of the Screw which relates to the project of realising the work as a totality, Blanchot makes possible a more radical approach to the text, illustrating the non-totalization of the work whose borders are uncertain. In this way, Blanchot can be shown to step beyond an impossible conception of the absence of the work. (shrink)

The current experiments examine mental health clinicians’ beliefs about biological, psychological, and environmental bases of the DSM‐IV‐TR mental disorders and the consequences of those causal beliefs for judging treatment effectiveness. Study 1 found a large negative correlation between clinicians’ beliefs about biological bases and environmental/psychological bases, suggesting that clinicians conceptualize mental disorders along a single continuum spanning from highly biological disorders (e.g., autistic disorder) to highly nonbiological disorders (e.g., adjustment disorders). Study 2 replicated this finding by having clinicians list what (...) they thought were the specific causes of nine familiar mental disorders and rate their bio–psycho–environmental bases. Study 3 further found that clinicians believe medication to be more effective for biologically based mental disorders and psychotherapy to be more effective for psychosocially based mental disorders. These results demonstrate that even expert mental health clinicians make strong distinctions between psychological and biological phenomena. (shrink)

It has been well documented that children perceive robots as social, mental, and moral others. Studies on child-robot interaction may encourage this perception of robots, first, by using a Wizard of Oz set-up and, second, by having robots engage in self-description. However, much remains unknown about the effects of transparent teleoperation and self-description on children’s perception of, and relationship formation with a robot. To address this research gap initially, we conducted an experimental study with a 2 × 2 between-subject design (...) in which 168 children aged 7–10 interacted with a Nao robot once. Transparency about the teleoperation procedure decreased children’s perceptions of the robot’s autonomy and anthropomorphism. Self-description reduced the degree to which children perceived the robot as being similar to themselves. Transparent teleoperation and self-description affected neither children’s perceptions of the robot’s animacy and social presence nor their closeness to and trust in the robot. (shrink)

L'ouvrage publié réunit les actes d'une journée d'étude consacrée à L'imprévu et le droit, souhaitée par les doctorants et organisée par l'Ecole doctorale de droit comparé de l'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Le sujet est immédiatement apparu très riche. Si le terme d'imprévu n'est pas essentiellement juridique, il fait écho à des critères du droit tels que la prévisibilité d'une situation ou d'un texte, ou l'imprévisibilité d'un événement comme cause exonératoire de responsabilité. Il renvoie plus généralement à l'exigence de sécurité juridique (...) qui s'opposerait à l'imprévu juridique. En outre le contexte était des plus propices, quelle que soit la discipline concernée, droit public, droit privé et/ou droit pénal. L'imprévu est entendu comme tout ce qui n'a pas été prévu, tout ce qui arrive lorsqu'on ne s'y attend pas. Prévoir, c'est admettre comme probable. La question de l'imprévu confronté au droit est intéressante car les deux concepts semblent antinomiques. Le droit apparaît en effet comme quelque chose de figé, permettant de régler par anticipation les comportements humains. Il doit permettre à chacun de régler sa conduite puisque nul n'est censé ignorer la loi. Le droit doit donc être à la fois connu et prévisible dans ses effets même s'il n'en est pas toujours ainsi. La notion d'imprévu semble rencontrer le droit de deux manières. D'une part, il existe la norme imprévue : la norme nouvelle, la coutume en formation ou l'interprétation surprenante. Se posent alors les questions de la prévisibilité du droit, et corrélativement celle de la sécurité juridique. D'autre part, il y a le fait imprévu. La norme doit se saisir de comportements humains ou de situations de fait qui n'avaient pas été anticipés. L'appréhension du risque et de la survenance d'événements inattendus par des règles de droit préexistantes devient alors un enjeu essentiel. (shrink)

Recent neuroscientific research has caused a paradigm shift in our understanding of the meaning and scope of compassion. Derived from the Latin root compassiō, compassion used to be a religious emotion that implied suffering with the perceived sufferer, whereas now it is examined as a psychological, neuroscientific, neurobiological, and thus natural, phenomenon. The newly arisen research interest in compassion led to the development of secular compassion training programs that follow closely in the footsteps of the “mindfulness revolution.” Whereas the latter (...) has been criticized for its reductionist appropriation of Buddhist thought by the capitalist west, in this paper, I demonstrate that the secularization of compassion is the result of innovative activities by representatives of the Buddhist traditions. I argue that some of the causes for the recent secularization and sciencization can be traced back into the fourteenth century Tibet, namely to the innovative exegetical activities of the scholars of the Tibetan Lojong tradition. I argue that from the perspective of the tradition, the sciencization of compassion resembles a deliberate purposeful “translation” effort that fits into the “two-track approach” of Buddhist propagation. (shrink)

Can we build endogenous expectations about the locus of occurrence of a target without being able to describe them? Participants performed cue–target detection tasks with different proportions of valid and invalid trials, without being informed of these proportions, and demonstrated typical endogenous effects. About half were subsequently able to correctly describe the cue–target relationships . However, even non-verbalizer participants showed endogenous orienting with peripheral cues , not depending solely on practice . Explicit instructions did not bring about dramatic advantages in (...) performance .With central symbolic cues, only verbalizers showed reliable endogenous effects . We concluded that endogenous orienting with peripheral cues can occur independently of participants developing explicit hypotheses about the cue–target relationships. (shrink)

Wijdicks and colleagues1 recently presented the Full Outline of UnResponsiveness (FOUR) scale as an alternative to the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS)2 in the evaluation of consciousness in severely brain-damaged patients. They studied 120 patients in an intensive care setting (mainly neuro-intensive care) and claimed that “the FOUR score detects a locked-in syndrome, as well as the presence of a vegetative state.”1 We fully agree that the FOUR is advantageous in identifying locked-in patients given that it specifically tests for eye movements (...) or blinking on command. This is welcomed given that misdiagnosis of the locked-in syndrome has been shown to occur in more than half of the cases (see Laureys and colleagues3 for review). As for the diagnosis of the vegetative state, the scale explicitly tests for visual pursuit, and hence can disentangle the vegetative state from the minimally conscious state (MCS). The diagnostic criteria for MCS have been proposed4 only recently, but Wijdicks and colleagues1 do not mention the existence of this clinical entity in their article. As for the vegetative state, MCS can be encountered in the acute or subacute setting as a transitional state on the way to further recovery, or it can be a more chronic or even permanent condition. The MCS refers to patients showing inconsistent, albeit clearly discernible, minimal behavioral evidence of consciousness (eg, localization of noxious stimuli, eye fixation or tracking, reproducible movement to command, or nonfunctional verbalization).4 The FOUR scale does not test for all of the behavioral criteria required to diagnose MCS.4 It is known from the literature (see Majerus and colleagues5 for review) that about a third of patients diagnosed with vegetative state are actually in MCS, and this misdiagnosis can lead to major clinical, therapeutic, and ethical consequences. We tested the ability of the newly proposed FOUR scale to correctly diagnose the vegetative state in an acute (intensive care and neurology ward) and chronic (neurorehabilitation) setting.. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest that there is a need to examine what is meant by “context” in Social Psychology and present an example of how to place identity in its social and institutional context. Taking the case of British naturalisation, the process whereby migrants become citizens, we show that the identity of naturalised citizens is defined by common-sense ideas about Britishness and by immigration policies. An analysis of policy documents on “earned citizenship” and interviews with naturalised citizens shows that (...) the distinction between “elite” and “non-elite” migrants is evident in both the “reified” sphere of policy and the “common sense” sphere of everyday identity construction. While social representations embedded in lay experience construct ethno-cultural similarity and difference, immigration policies engage in an institutionalised positioning process by determining migrants' rights of mobility. These spheres of knowledge and practice are not disconnected as these two levels of “managing otherness” overlap—it is the poorer, less skilled migrants, originating outside the West who epitomise difference (within a consensual sphere) and have less freedom of mobility (within a reified sphere). We show that the context of identity should be understood as simultaneously psychological and political. (shrink)

Despite general agreement within philosophy that peer review is indispensable, its fairness and reliability is often questioned. This article suggests that such worries can to a large extent be met by adopting the practice that reviews as well as earlier versions of papers are made publicly available when the final version of a paper is published. This suggestion combines the advantages of transparency with the merits of anonymity of reviewers. While there are obstacles to this suggestion, the article argues that (...) it would be worthwhile to implement it because it can help map patterns of conduct and secure confidence in the fairness and reliability of review procedures and journal editing within philosophy. (shrink)

Circadian rhythm abnormalities in bipolar disorder have led to a search for genetic abnormalities in circadian "clock genes" associated with BD. However, no significant clock gene findings have emerged from genome-wide association studies. At least three factors could account for this discrepancy: complex traits are polygenic, the organization of the clock is more complex than previously recognized, and/or genetic risk for BD may be shared across multiple illnesses. To investigate these issues, we considered the clock gene network at three levels: (...) essential "core" clock genes, upstream circadian clock modulators, and downstream clock controlled genes. Using relaxed thresholds for GWAS statistical significance, we determined the rates of clock vs. control genetic associations with BD, and four additional illnesses that share clinical features and/or genetic risk with BD. Then we compared the results to a set of lithium-responsive genes. Associations with BD-spectrum illnesses and lithium-responsiveness were both enriched among core clock genes but not among upstream clock modulators. Associations with BD-spectrum illnesses and lithium-responsiveness were also enriched among pervasively rhythmic clock-controlled genes but not among genes that were less pervasively rhythmic or non-rhythmic. Our analysis reveals previously unrecognized associations between clock genes and BD-spectrum illnesses, partly reconciling previously discordant results from past GWAS and candidate gene studies. (shrink)

Kants Ethik ist gut begründbar, es fehlt ihr aber anscheinend an Motivationskraft. Wie soll man nach Kant dazu bewegt werden, moralisch zu sein? Seine ethischen Schriften problematisieren, was die Anthropologie zu lösen versucht: Motivation zum moralischen Handeln. Diese "Lösung" steht in einer Tradition europäischer Moralistik, in der es darum geht, Moral anthropologisch zu reflektieren. Sie beschreiben einen Handlungsraum, in dem Regeln der Klugheit, Manieren und Höflichkeit und ein Konzept des "moralischen Scheins" das selbstbestimmte Individuum leiten. Die Aufgabe des vorliegenden Buches (...) ist es, Kant systematisch, also nicht allein historisch, durch die Leitfrage nach Motivation und Begründung in den Horizont moralistischer Ethik einzufügen. Die theoretische Verortung von Kants Moralsystem und seine Einordnung in die "historische Semantik" von Moral und Anthropologie nimmt Maß an Niklas Luhmanns Ansätzen zu diesem Thema.. (shrink)

While professional philosophers are often reluctant to address the issue of the aims of philosophy, the field of philosophy with children is abundant with articulated aims which tend to be more concrete and ambitious than those of academic philosophy. Is this asymmetry a problem? And how are we to think about the aims of philosophy with children? This article argues that not much will be gained from looking to academic philosophy because discussions here are surprisingly meager and have provided little (...) agreement. Nevertheless, it is also argued that the aims of philosophy with children must be constrained by what can be achieved by academic philosophy. (shrink)

En philosophie, le personnage conceptuel trace une nouvelle image de la pensée. Au cinéma, avec la modernité, le personnage découvre une nouvelle image. Après la crise de I’image-action, les signes ne se reconnaissent pas plus qu ’ils ne se déduisent : ils se voient. Celui qui voit, c’est le personnage. Dans cette vision, il devient I’inventeur de nouvelles façons de percevoir. Il est á la fois producteur et créateur. Le propre du personnage conceptuel réside aussi en la création non pas (...) de percepts, mais de concepts. À partir de ces deux constatations, il nous semble intéressant de commenter le troisième chapitre de Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? qui porte sur le personnage conceptuel et de faire une analyse du voyant, personnage de cinéma, qui apparaît dans le premier chapitre de L’image-temps. Grâce à cette étude croisée nous espérons trouver des recoupements et des liens entre personnage, pensée et perception. (shrink)

Arabidopsis thaliana (Thale cress, Arabidopsis) is an ideal model organism for the molecular genetic analysis of many plant processes. The availability of a complete physical map would greatly facilitate the gene cloning steps in these studies. The small genome size of Arabidopsis makes the construction of such a map a feasible goal. One of the approaches to construct an overlapping library of the Arabidopsis genome takes advantage of the many mapped markers and the availability of Arabidopsis yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) (...) libraries. Mapped molecular markers are used to identify corresponding YAC clones and thereby place them on the genetic map. Subsequently, these YAC clones provide the framework for directed walking experiments aimed at closing the gaps between the YAC contigs. Adopting this strategy, YAC clones comprising about 10% of the genome have been assigned to the top halves of Arabidopsis chromosomes 4 and 5. Extensive walking experiments in a 10 cM interval of chromosome 4 have resulted in two contiguous regions in the megabase size range. (shrink)

Este artigo aborda as motivações para a docência e os desafios enfrentados por licenciandos em psicologia. A metodologia utilizada foi a abordagem qualitativa, e o instrumento de coleta de dados questionário online com questões abertas e fechadas. Participaram do estudo, onze estudantes de cursos de licenciatura em psicologia de quatro instituições universitárias das regiões sul e sudeste do Brasil. Os resultados demonstraram que a escolha pela licenciatura se deu, sobretudo, pelo interesse e curiosidade na área da educação, apropriação dos saberes (...) pedagógicos, ampliação do mercado de trabalho, bem como as possibilidades de atuação profissional. As dificuldades apontadas revelaram: a falta de informações sobre as especificidades do curso de licenciatura e da atuação do professor de psicologia e a ausência de docentes com saberes pedagógicos para atuar na licenciatura em psicologia. Embora seja considerada formação complementar entre os estudantes, observou-se possibilidades de um ensino-aprendizagem de psicologia engajada e inventiva. (shrink)

Background Discussions on ethical aspects of life-and-death decisions within the hospital are often made in plenary. The prehospital physician, however, may be faced with ethical dilemmas in life-and-death decisions when time-critical decisions to initiate or refrain from resuscitative efforts need to be taken without the possibility to discuss matters with colleagues. Little is known whether these considerations regarding ethical issues in crucial life-and-death decisions are documented prehospitally. This is a review of the ethical considerations documented in the prehospital medical records (...) of patients in a Danish prehospital setting for whom the decision to resuscitate or not was made at the scene. Methods The study is based on discharge summaries of all patients subjected to crucial life-and-death decisions by the Mobile Emergency Care Unit in Odense in the years 2010 to 2014. The medical records with possible documentation of ethical issues were independently reviewed by two philosophers in order to identify explicit ethical or philosophical considerations pertaining to the decision to resuscitate or not. Results In total, 1275 patients were either declared dead at the scene without exhibiting layman’s reliable signs of death or admitted to hospital following resuscitation. In a total of 62 patients, 85 specific ethical issues related to resuscitation were documented. The expressions of the ethical considerations were generally vague or unclear and almost exclusively concerned the interests of the patient and not the relatives. In the vast majority of cases where an ethical content was identified, the ethical considerations led to a decision to terminate treatment. Conclusions A strengthened practice of documenting ethical considerations in prehospital life-and-death decision-making in the patient’s medical records is required. We suggest that a template be implemented in the prehospital medical records describing the basis for any ethical decisions. This template should contain information regarding the persons involved in the deliberations and notes on ethical considerations. The documentation should include considerations concerning the patient’s end-of-life wishes, the estimations of the quality of life before and after the incident, and a summary of other ethical concerns taken into account, such as the integrity of the patient and frame of mind of relatives. (shrink)

This volume maps the areas of ethical concern in the debate regarding the governance of genetic information, and suggests alternative ethical frameworks and models of regulation in order to inform its restructuring. Genetic governance is at the heart of medical and scientific developments, and is connected to global exploitation, issues of commodification, commercialisation and ownership, the concepts of property and intellectual property and concerns about individual and communal identity. Thus the decisions that are made in the next few years about (...) appropriate models of genetic governance will have knock-on effects for other areas of governance. In short the final answer to 'Who Decides?' in the context of genetic governance will fundamentally shape the ethical constructs of individuals and their networks and relationships in the public sphere. (shrink)

Digital Earth applications provide a common ground for visualizing, simulating, and modeling real-world situations. The potential of Digital Earth applications has increased significantly with the evolution of artificial intelligence systems and the capacity to collect and process complex amounts of geospatial data. Yet, the widespread techno-optimism at the root of Digital Earth must now confront concerns over high-risk artificial intelligence systems and power asymmetries of a datafied society. In this commentary, we claim that not only can current debates about data (...) governance and ethical artificial intelligence inform development in the field of Digital Earth, but that the specificities of geospatial data, together with the expectations surrounding Digital Earth applications, offer a fruitful lens through which to examine current debates on data governance and artificial intelligence ethics. In particular, we argue that for the implementation of ethical artificial intelligence and inclusive approaches to data governance, Digital Earth initiatives need to involve stakeholders and communities at the local level and be sensitive to social, legal, cultural, and institutional contexts, including conflicts that might arise within those contexts. (shrink)

We agree with Rendell and Whitehead that cetaceans acquire knowledge from caretakers and peers, and that a clear understanding of this process can provide insight into the evolution of mammalian cognition. The passive observational methods they advocate, however, are inadequate for determining what cetaceans know. Only by experimentally investigating the cognition of cetaceans can we hope to understand what they learn through social interactions.

Background In this qualitative analysis we aimed to explore addiction physicians’ perspectives on safer injection education for people who inject drugs, especially: (1) on possible means of introducing safer injection education in the medical environment, (2) on the compatibility of safer injection education with each physician’s core values and goals, and (3) on possible reasons for the ethical dilemma in safer injection education. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with eleven physicians practicing addiction medicine in France in clinical and harm reduction (...) settings. Results All participants were in favor of educational interventions for people who inject drugs. Nonetheless, these interventions varied from simple advice to injection supervision and they were seen as less acceptable when they concerned the practical and material aspects of injection. Some participants found that physicians practicing in clinical settings, where patients consult mostly to stop their drug use, should not practice safer injection education. On the contrary, other participants claimed that safer injection education was essential in all settings and was not a choice but rather a duty for addiction physicians. The ethical dilemma of such intervention when delivered by medical staff was viewed as a complex phenomenon, related to the representations of intravenous drug use and to societal expectations from physicians. Conclusion Physicians’ views on safer injection education for people who inject drugs reveal an emotionally charged subject related to the structural organization of addiction management in France. Such education is marked by an arduous history of harm reduction policies in France. IRB registration: #00011928. (shrink)

Si en droit public comme en droit privé, l’ordre public limite la liberté contractuelle et fonde des atteintes à la stabilité des relations contractuelles, sa force impérative apparaît aujourd’hui tempérée par la sécurité juridique et par les exigences du service public. Mais il s’agit en réalité de la confrontation de plusieurs éléments de l’ordre public, en raison de la place croissante accordée dans l’ordre social à des valeurs liées à l’institutionnalisation de la paix sociale.