This study investigates the reaction of high school students in an alternative urban secondary school to highly controlling, authoritarian practices. Premised on the published theories, we imagined that students would object to the regime and consider it unduly repressive. Student reactions were elicited through questionnaires and interviews. To our considerable surprise, most respondents approved of the authoritarian regime and disapproved of granting students more self-expression. Most have come to believe that they do not deserve freedom from pervasive rules, for they (...) will indeed abuse it. As one child said approvingly, ?This is a disciplinary school? ? you give up freedom and accept rules. We discuss the implications of such a strong identification with the school's norms and the consequent distrust of personal autonomy. (shrink)

Our in-the-moment experience of the world can feel vivid and rich, even when we cannot describe our experience due to limitations of attention, memory or other cognitive processes. But the nature of visual awareness is quite sparse, as suggested by the phenomena of failures of awareness, such as change blindness and inattentional blindness. I will argue that once failures of memory or failures of comparison are ruled out as explanations for these phenomena, they present strong evidence against rich awareness. To (...) accommodate and explain these massive failures of awareness, any theory of phenomenal consciousness must downgrade phenomenology to a degree where it is functionless or, ironically, does not reflect what we experience. (shrink)

Perhaps the most striking phenomenon of visual awareness is inattentional blindness (IB), in which a surprisingly salient event right in front of you may go completely unseen when unattended. Does IB reflect a failure of perception, or only of subsequent memory? Previous work has been unable to answer this question, due to a seemingly intractable dilemma: ruling out memory requires immediate perceptual reports, but soliciting such reports fuels an expectation that eliminates IB. Here we introduce a way of evoking repeated (...) IB in the same subjects and the same session: we show that observers fail to report seeing salient events’ not only when they have no expectation, but also when they have the wrong expectations about the events nature. This occurs when observers must immediately report seeing anything unexpected, even mid-event. Repeated IB thus demonstrates that IB is aptly named: it reflects a genuine deficit in moment-by-moment conscious perception, rather than a form of inattentional amnesia. (shrink)

Do we see more than we can report? Psychologists and philosophers have been hotly debating this question, in part because both possibilities are supported by suggestive evidence. On one hand, phenomena such as inattentional blindness and change blindness suggest that visual awareness is especially sparse. On the other hand, experiments relating to iconic memory suggest that our in-the-moment awareness of the world is much richer than can be reported. Recent research has attempted to resolve this debate by showing that observers (...) can accurately report the color diversity of a quickly flashed group of letters, even for letters that are unattended. If this ability requires awareness of the individual letters’ colors, then this may count as a clear case of conscious awareness overflowing cognitive access. Here we explored this requirement directly: can we perceive ensemble properties of scenes even without being aware of the relevant individual features? Across several experiments that combined aspects of iconic memory with measures of change blindness, we show that observers can accurately report the color diversity of unattended stimuli, even while their self-reported awareness of the individual elements is coarse or nonexistent — and even while they are completely blind to situations in which each individual element changes color mid-trial throughout the entire experiment. We conclude that awareness of statistical properties may occur in the absence of awareness of individual features, and that such results are fully consistent with sparse visual awareness. (shrink)

This research aims to help create a systematic casualty recording database for the civilian casualties of the Russian aggression within Ukraine. It looks at the definitions surrounding casualty recording and human security to help create a baseline for the project. It examines the Register of the Holodomor Victims, the Bosnian Book of the Dead, the Kosovo Memorial Book, and the casualty recording of Iraq Body Count and the Bouderbala Commission, in terms of their recording systems and public databases. The live (...) project is also informed by the work of Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), the United Nations, Children of War, and the Memorial Platform. (shrink)

To ban or significantly restrict visitors for patients in hospital could seem to be simply a sensible and easy precaution to take during a pandemic: a policy that is unpopular, perhaps, and even unfortunate, but not something that wrongs anyone. However, I argue that in fact such restrictions on visitors infringe upon a fundamental right, to freedom of association. While there may still be permissible restrictions on visitors, making the case for these becomes highly demanding. One common way to understand (...) the purpose of the fundamental liberties is as protecting us from interference in a core set of freedoms, even when such interference would be to our benefit or would promote the general good. This reframing of the importance of visitors in terms of a right also has implications for how to run hospitals beyond the pandemic era: it supports a rapid expansion of visitor access and suggests that any decision to significantly restrict visitors ought not be left in the hospital, or hospital trust’s, hands. (shrink)

Prior to August Weismann’s 1889 germ-plasm theory, social reformers believed that humans could inherit the effects of a salubrious environment and, by passing environmentally-induced modifications to their offspring, achieve continuous progress. Weismann’s theory disrupted this logic and caused many to fear that they had little control over human development. As numerous historians have observed, this contributed to the birth of the eugenics movement. However, through an examination of the work of social scientists Lester Frank Ward, Richard T. Ely, Amos (...) Griswold Warner, James Mark Baldwin, Simon Nelson Patten, Alfred Kroeber, Walter Robinson Smith, and Luther Lee Bernard, I demonstrate that Weismann’s ideas also prompted scholars to create of theories of human progress in which the social environment had a central role and biological heredity had a diminished one. Furthermore, in creating a new theory of social progress based on a concept called “social heredity,” the thinkers surveyed in this article separated biological and social thought and asserted the independence of the American social sciences. I argue that this represents an important moment in the maturation of the human sciences, and I suggest that the germ-plasm theory of heredity deserves a larger place in histories of the development of the American social scientific disciplines. (shrink)

With an overall estimated 5-year survival rate of 67 percent, bone marrow transplant is a potential cure for patients with primary immune regulatory diseases. Given that Sa...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Protecting Human Research SubjectsThe Office for Protection from Research RisksJoan Paine Porter (bio)The office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR), located within the National Institutes of Health, has two divisions: Human Subject Protections and Animal Welfare. This article will address the overall responsibilities and current projects relating to human subject protections.OPRR implements the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) regulations for the protection of human subjects (45 CFR (...) 46 (1991)). These regulations fulfill the responsibilities set forth in the Public Health Service (PHS) Act with regard to institutional review boards (IRB) and other protections for human subjects involved in biomedical and behavioral research conducted or supported by HHS. The PHS Act also mandates a program to clarify ethical issues in biomedical research involving human subjects and to address violations of the rights of human subjects of research (P.L. 99-158 (1985)).OPRR staff negotiate assurances of compliance with institutions conducting Federally-supported research involving human subjects. The assurances describe the policies and procedures each institution will follow to fulfill the requirements of the regulations, including specific IRB composition and functions.In addition, OPRR cosponsors with the Food and Drug Administration and awardee institutions a series of regional workshops that address human subject protections issues. These are attended by IRB members, institutional officials, research investigators, and others involved with human subject protections.Current ActivitiesNumerous activities are underway in OPRR. The following describes only a few of the initiatives and studies aimed at helping develop policies and procedures to protect human subjects of research."Points to Consider" DocumentsOPRR is currently working with the National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR) to develop a "points to consider" document for IRBs and others involved in large genetic pedigree studies. Many questions have emerged [End Page 279] on topics such as how subjects should be recruited, with whom information should be shared about others in the family, social risks of disclosure in employment and insurance, the circumstances and timing of informing subjects about study results, and involvement of children. OPRR and NCHGR hope to assemble a group this fall to review and refine the points that are now being developed jointly. A conference in South Carolina organized by the American Association for Advancement in the Sciences entitled "Project on the Ethical and Legal Implications of Genetic Testing," helped generate advice, and identified some of the more controversial issues in design and conduct of genetic research that involves large groups of family members.Another "points to consider" effort concerns enrollment of women and minorities in research. The PHS has established a policy that members of these groups must be included in research projects unless there are valid scientific justifications for their exclusion which can be made on a project by project basis (ADAMHA/NIH Policy 1990; NIH/ADAMHA Policy 1990). OPRR has commissioned several scholarly papers to help in developing "points to consider" for IRBs as they balance issues of equitable selection of subjects and protection of these selected individuals. Concerns about enrolling women of childbearing age in research that may be harmful to a fetus, and liability issues frequently dominate discussion in this area. The papers will address ethical, legal, and statistical aspects of enrollment of minorities and women as well as provide a description of various practices and roles of IRBs in addressing goals of fair selection of participants and appropriate protections.OPRR is also working with the PHS Panel on Women, Adolescents and Children to produce a document, also in the form of "points to consider" guidance, concerning enrollment of children who are wards of the state in HIV-related research. Subpart D of the regulations for the protection of human subjects (45 CFR 46) specifically addresses research involving children who are wards of the state, including the special protections that must be provided. State and local officials who have authority to enroll foster care children in research have indicated a desire to obtain advice in this area.The IRB GuidebookA major project that is now being completed under contract to the Poynter Center at Indiana University is the IRB Guidebook. It will revise and expand the current IRB Guidebook produced in the 1980s... (shrink)

Naked Science is about contested domains and includes different science cultures: physics, molecular biology, primatology, immunology, ecology, medical environmental, mathematical and navigational domains. While the volume rests on the assumption that science is not autonomous, the book is distinguished by its global perspective. Examining knowledge systems within a planetary frame forces thinking about boundaries that silence or affect knowledge-building. Consideration of ethnoscience and technoscience research within a common framework is overdue for raising questions about deeply held beliefs and assumptions we (...) all carry about scientific knowledge. We need a perspective on how to regard different science traditions because public controversies should not be about a glorified science or a despicable science. Contributors are: Ward Goodenough, Eloisa and Brent Berlin, Colin Scott, Jean Lave, Emily Martin, Troy Duster, Hugh Gusterson, Charles Schwartz, Joan Fujimura, Sharon Traweek, Estellie Smith, Ellen Bielawaski, David Jacobon, Charles Ziegler, Pamela Asquith. (shrink)

Two Treatises of Government de John Locke propone dos pactos, uno que funda el Estado y otro que funda el gobierno. La presencia de estos dos pactos supone profundas diferencias con el contractualismo hobbesiano y abre la puerta a la teoría de la resistencia lockeana. En este artículo se analizan con cierto detalle las características de ambos pactos a la luz no solo de TT sino también de otros textos de Locke a fin de precisar la especificidad y originalidad de (...) su propuesta política. Ello supondrá discutir con la lectura de intérpretes clásicos como John Dunn y John Simmons, así como otros más contemporáneos como Lee Ward y Robert Faulkner. (shrink)

In The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature, Emily Brady takes a fresh look at the sublime and shows why it endures as a meaningful concept in contemporary philosophy. In a reassessment of historical approaches, the first part of the book identifies the scope and value of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy, nineteenth-century philosophy and Romanticism, and early wilderness aesthetics. The second part examines the sublime's contemporary significance through its relationship to the arts; its position with respect (...) to other aesthetic categories involving mixed or negative emotions, such as tragedy; and its place in environmental aesthetics and ethics. Far from being an outmoded concept, Brady argues that the sublime is a distinctive aesthetic category which reveals an important, if sometimes challenging, aesthetic-moral relationship with the natural world. (shrink)

Medical ethics assumes a clear boundary between clinical research and clinical medicine: one produces knowledge for the benefit of future patients, while the other provides optimal care to individuals right now. It also assumes that the two cannot be integrated without sacrificing the needs of the current patient to those of future patients. But integration could allow us to provide better care to everyone, now and in the future.

The Higgs mechanism gives mass to Yang-Mills gauge bosons. According to the conventional wisdom, this happens through the spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry. Yet, gauge symmetries merely reflect a redundancy in the state description and therefore the spontaneous breaking can not be an essential ingredient. Indeed, as already shown by Higgs and Kibble, the mechanism can be explained in terms of gauge invariant variables, without invoking spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this paper, we present a general discussion of such gauge invariant (...) treatments for the case of the Abelian Higgs model, in the context of classical field theory. We thereby distinguish between two different notions of gauge: one that takes all local transformations to be gauge and one that relates gauge to a failure of determinism. (shrink)

Some individuals facing dementia contemplate hastening their own death: weighing the possibility of living longer with dementia against the alternative of dying sooner but avoiding the later stages of cognitive and functional impairment. This weighing resonates with an ethical and legal consensus in the United States that individuals can voluntarily choose to forgo life‐sustaining interventions and also that medical professionals can support these choices even when they will result in an earlier death. For these reasons, whether and how a terminally (...) ill individual can choose to control the timing of their death is a topic that cannot be avoided when considering the dementia trajectory. With a focus on the U.S. context, this landscape review considers the status of provisions that would legally permit people facing dementia to hasten death with appropriate support from medical professionals. This review can be used to plan and guide clinical and legal practitioner discussion and policy development concerning evolving questions not fully covered by existing medical decision‐making provisions. (shrink)

Frege's life and character -- The project -- Frege's new logic -- Defining the numbers -- The reconception of the logic, I-"Function and concept" -- The reconception of the logic, II- "On sense and meaning" and "on concept and object" -- Basic laws, the great contradiction, and its aftermath -- On the foundations of geometry -- Logical investigations -- Frege's influence on recent philosophy.

Play is a vital component of the social life and well-being of both children and adults. This book examines the concept of play and considers a variety of the related philosophical issues. It also includes meta-analyses from a range of philosophers and theorists, as well as an exploration of some key applied ethical considerations. The main objective of The Philosophy of Play is to provide a richer understanding of the concept and nature of play and its relation to human life (...) and values, and to build disciplinary and paradigmatic bridges between scholars of philosophy and scholars of play. Including specific chapters dedicated to children and play, and exploring the work of key thinkers such as Plato, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Deleuze and Nietzsche, this book is invaluable reading for any advanced student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in education, playwork, leisure studies, applied ethics or the philosophy of sport. (shrink)

The rule of rescue describes the moral impulse to save identifiable lives in immediate danger at any expense. Think of the extremes taken to rescue a small child who has fallen down a well, a woman pinned beneath the rubble of an earthquake, or a submarine crew trapped on the ocean floor. No effort is deemed too great. Yet should this same moral instinct to rescue, regardless of cost, be applied in the emergency room, the hospital, or the community clinic? (...) -/- In health care, the desire to save lives at any cost must be reconciled with the reality of resource scarcity. As one example, the estimated cost for prophylactic Factor VIII to treat one patient with hemophilia for one year is $300,000. Costs of this magnitude have been accepted by public and private insurers in the developed world, even though, in principle, these sums could provide greater overall health benefit if allocated to pay for the unmet health care needs of many other patients. Looking forward, however, broad application of the rule of rescue will be increasingly untenable. But the moral instinct will remain: the desire to help those weakest among us, especially when their small numbers allow us to see them as unique individuals. What, then, is the ethical framework that can guide coverage and reimbursement decisions for orphan drugs into the future? (shrink)

Interest in the use of medical data for health research is increasing. Yet, as Elizabeth Ford and colleagues rightly note, there are open questions about the suitability of existing ethical and regulatory oversight frameworks for these research approaches. In their feature article, ‘Should free text data in electronic medical records be shared for research? A citizen’s jury study in the United Kingdom’, Ford et al report the results of a deliberative engagement study in which 18 members of the public were (...) asked whether and under what conditions free text data from medical records should be shared for research purposes. The authors’ explicit aim was to inform national policy on sharing medical text. Public attitudes—stated otherwise, the attitudes of patients whose medical information will ultimately be used under any data sharing policy—are a necessary input into ethical and regulatory decision-making about use of medical data for health research. Though public attitudes will rarely be determinative, they must be weighed in order to uphold the ethical principle of respect for persons.1 Ford et al ’s article is, therefore, an important contribution to …. (shrink)

Frege is celebrated as an arch-Platonist and arch-realist. He is renowned for claiming that truths of arithmetic are eternally true and independent of us, our judgments and our thoughts; that there is a third realm containing nonphysical objects that are not ideas. Until recently, there were few attempts to explicate these renowned claims, for most philosophers thought the clarity of Frege's prose rendered explication unnecessary. But the last ten years have seen the publication of several revisionist interpretations of Frege's writings (...) — interpretations on which these claims receive a very different reading. In Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge attempts to undermine this trend. Burge argues that Frege is the very Platonist most have thought him — that revisionist interpretations of Frege's Platonism, mine among them, run afoul of the words on Frege's pages. This paper is a response to Burge's criticisms. I argue that my interpretation is more faithful than Burge's to Frege's texts. (shrink)

This short comment on the Court of Protection decision in W v M draws attention to the primacy the judge gave to the preservation of life and discusses the relative lack of weight accorded to M's previously expressed views.

Does Frege have a metatheory for his logic? There is an obvious and uncontroversial sense in which he does. Frege introduces and discusses his new logic in natural language; he argues, in response to criticisms of Begriffsschrift, that his logic is superior to Boole's by discussing formal features of both systems. In so far as the enterprise of using natural language to introduce, discuss, and argue about features of a formal system is metatheoretic, there can be no doubt: Frege has (...) a metatheory. There is also an obvious and uncontroversial sense in which Frege does not have a metatheory for his logic. The model theoretic semantics with which we are familiar today are a post-Fregean development. The question I address in this paper is, does Frege have a metatheory in the following sense: do his justifications of his basic laws and rules of inference employ, or even require, ineliminable use of a truth predicate and metalinguistic variables? My answer is ‘no’ on both counts. I argue that Frege neither uses, nor has any need to use, a truth predicate or metalinguistic variables in his justifications of his basic laws and rules of inference. Quine's famous explanation of the need for semantic ascent simply does not apply to Frege's logic. The purpose of the discussions that are typically understood as constituting Frege's metatheory is, rather, elucidatory. And once we see what the aim of these particular elucidations is, we can explain Frege's otherwise puzzling eschewal of the truth predicate in his discussions of the justification of the laws and rules of inference. (shrink)

We argued last year in this journal that extensive integration of research and care is a worthy goal of health system design, and we second the call from Ruth Faden and colleagues to move toward learning health care systems. As they recognize, learning health care systems demand the coordination of research and medical ethics—two sets of normative commitments that have long been considered distinct. In offering a novel ethics framework for such systems, Faden et al. advance the scholarly debate about (...) how best to do this and challenge us to think more deeply about its practical implications. However, we believe that at least three issues they raise require additional attention. First, the research‐care distinction has more normative bite than they are willing to concede. Second, the role for independent oversight requires clarification. Finally, they neglect the concept of stewardship as a guiding obligation of learning health care systems. (shrink)

We argued last year in this journal that extensive integration of research and care is a worthy goal of health system design, and we second the call from Ruth Faden and colleagues to move toward learning health care systems. As they recognize, learning health care systems demand the coordination of research and medical ethics—two sets of normative commitments that have long been considered distinct. In offering a novel ethics framework for such systems, Faden et al. advance the scholarly debate about (...) how best to do this and challenge us to think more deeply about its practical implications. However, we believe that at least three issues they raise require additional attention. First, the research‐care distinction has more normative bite than they are willing to concede. Second, the role for independent oversight requires clarification. Finally, they neglect the concept of stewardship as a guiding obligation of learning health care systems. (shrink)

What mechanism implements the mutual exclusivity bias to map novel labels to objects without names? Prominent theoretical accounts of mutual exclusivity (e.g., Markman, 1989, 1990) propose that infants are guided by their knowledge of object names. However, the mutual exclusivity constraint could be implemented via monitoring of object novelty (see Merriman, Marazita, & Jarvis, 1995). We sought to discriminate between these contrasting explanations across two preferential looking experiments with 22-month-olds. In Experiment 1, infants viewed three objects: one name-known, two name-unknown. (...) Of the two name-unknown objects, one was novel, and the other had been previously familiarized. The infants responded to hearing a novel label by increasing attention only to the novel, name-unknown object. In a second experiment in which the name-known object was absent, a novel label increased infants’ attention to a novel object beyond baseline preference for novelty. The experiments provide clear evidence for a novelty-based mechanism. However, differences in the time course of disambiguation across experiments suggest that novelty processing may be influenced by contextual factors. (shrink)

Over the course of human life, health care decision‐making is often interdependent. In this article, we use “interdependence” to refer to patients’ engagement of nonclinicians—for example, family members or trusted friends—to reach health care decisions. Interdependence, we suggest, is common for patients in all stages of life, from early childhood to late adulthood. This view contrasts with the common bioethical assumption that medical decisions are either wholly independent or dependent and that independence or dependence is tightly coupled with a person's (...) decision‐making capacity. In this article, we array various approaches to decision‐making along a continuum of interdependence. An appreciation of this continuum can empower patients and elucidate ethical challenges that arise when people transition between different kinds of interdependence across the life span. (shrink)

If there is such a thing as a virtuous community, as Aristotle would have it, and if members of communities need to understand themselves in relation to community, then we have a large space from within which to grapple with the issues of social responsibility. Iris Marion Young developed a “social connection model” of justice which requires individuals to think outside of the borders of any one society when considering their responsibility to others. Donald Beggs advocates for a “group moral (...) virtue,” seeing the possibility of the development of virtuous characteristics of groups separate from their individual members.Combining these two ideas, I argue that it is possible to conceive of a society’s responsibility as one of developing such group virtues as will respond to the structural injustices of our interconnected world. (shrink)

If there is such a thing as a virtuous community, as Aristotle would have it, and if members of communities need to understand themselves in relation to community, then we have a large space from within which to grapple with the issues of social responsibility. Iris Marion Young developed a “social connection model” of justice which requires individuals to think outside of the borders of any one society when considering their responsibility to others. Donald Beggs advocates for a “group moral (...) virtue,” seeing the possibility of the development of virtuous characteristics of groups separate from their individual members.Combining these two ideas, I argue that it is possible to conceive of a society’s responsibility as one of developing such group virtues as will respond to the structural injustices of our interconnected world. (shrink)

Arendt wrote that "to think what we are doing" may make humans "abstain from evil-doing." I suggest that there is more to it than that. Moral Acuity is a phrase I use to discuss how one can know the right thing to do, often practically without thinking, when situations involving evil arise. Evil, for my purposes, refers to the causing of great harm to another. I propose that to be Morally Acute one must have the capacity for independent judgments and (...) possess sympathetic awareness of suffering. One must be able to make decisions independent of others. And, one must emphasize the suffering of the victim in moral decision-making. "Truly bringing the victim to mind" is a phrase which illustrates these two attributes. Truly bringing the victim to mind underscores the need for a kind of accuracy or acuity of perception unfettered by ego, belief, peers or cultural norm. Truly bringing the victim to mind emphasizes that the victim's experience be foremost in one's mind, that the suffering of another take precedence over other elements of particular circumstances. ;I stress the need for literacy regarding evil and those who refuse. I offer suggestions for moral development which stress the importance of thinking for oneself as well as the benefits of being able to see things from another person's perspective. The combination, while not the only channel for doing the right thing, will, I suggest, increase the likelihood. To be thought-full and clear-headed and sensitive to harm will, in the long run--and doesn't common sense tell us this anyway?--be the best route to determining the right thing to do. (shrink)

Perhaps not wholly unrelatedly to the message of the first Obama presidential campaign, the concept of hope has been receiving increased philosophical attention in recent years. A good bit has been written on honing a definition of hope, and investigating the morally relevant territory. After a brief summary of that literature, I situate myself amongst those who advocate for hope—at its best—as a virtue, and I then suggest that hope seems to have a unique status amongst the virtues insofar as (...) it appears to be foundational for moral progress. I want to suggest that virtue generally can be seen as having an infectious quality, and that along with hope's foundational status, this infectiousness is particularly crucial as regards the development of hope for working on solutions to structural injustice. (shrink)

This paper raises the question of whether there is anything foundational to hopefulness when considering it as a virtue, and uses the Aristotelian distinction between virtue in the “natural sense” and virtue in the “strict sense” to make the claim that hopefulness has a primacy to it. While that primacy rests on the existence of care and responsiveness of community, those caretakers must themselves be possessed of hopefulness, which, at its best will be virtuous.