The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Over the last five decades, philosophers of language have looked into the mechanisms for doing things with words. The same attention has not been devoted to how to undo those things, once they have been done. This paper identifies and examines three strategies to make one’s speech acts undone—namely, Annulment, Retraction, and Amendment. In annulling an act, a speaker brings to light its fatal flaws. Annulment amounts to recognizing an act as null, whereas retraction and amendment amount to making it (...) null. Speakers employ retraction to cancel the deontic updates engendered by a given act. They instead use amendment to adjust its degree of strength. I will argue that annulling, retracting, and amending are second-order speech acts, whose felicity conditions vary with the type of illocution they operate on. Undoing is therefore conceived of as a form of doing. Furthermore, I claim that, in calling off our acts, we undo the conventional or illocutionary effects of our words while leaving intact their past causal or perlocutionary outcomes. (shrink)

Over the last decade, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been defined first as a concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and cleaner environment and, second, as a process by which companies manage their relationship␣with stakeholders (European Commission, 2001. Nowadays, CSR has become a priority issue on governments’ agendas. This has changed governments’ capacity to act and impact on social and environmental issues in their relationship with companies, but has also affected the framework in which CSR (...) public policies are designed: governments are incorporating multi-stakeholder strategies. This article analyzes the CSR public policies in European advanced democracies, and more specifically the EU-15 countries, and provides explanatory keys on how governments have understood, designed and implemented their CSR public policies. The analysis has entailed the classification of CSR public policies taking into consideration the actor to which the governments’ policies were addressed. This approach to the analysis of CSR public policies in the EU-15 countries leads us to observe coinciding lines of action among the different countries analyzed, which has enabled us to propose a ‹four ideal’ typology model for governmental action on CSR in Europe: Partnership, Business in the Community, Sustainability, and Citizenship, and Agora. The main contribution of this article is to propose an analytical framework to analyze CSR public policies, which provide a perspective on the relationships between governments, businesses, and civil society stakeholders, and enable us to incorporate the analysis of CSR public policies into a broader approach focused on social governance. (shrink)

Moorean constructions are famously odd: it is infelicitous to deny that you believe what you claim to be true. But what about claiming that p, only to immediately put into question your evidence in support of p? In this paper, we identify and analyse a class of quasi-Moorean constructions, which we label counterevidentials. Although odd, counterevidentials can be accommodated as felicitous attempts to mitigate one’s claim right after making it. We explore how counterevidentials differ from lexicalised mitigation operators, parentheticals, and (...) anaphoric mitigation devices, and consider some cognate non-assertoric constructions. We conclude by exploring the implications of our analysis for theorising about linguistic responsibility, assertion, and lying. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role that the distinction between principle and constructive theories have in the question of the explanatory power of Special Relativity. We show how the distinction breaks down at the explanatory level. We assess Harvey Brown’s (2005) claim that, as a principle theory, Special Relativity lacks of explanatory power and criticize it, as, we argue, based upon an unrealistic picture of the kind of explanations provided by principle (and constructive) theories. Finally, we (...) claim that the structural account of explanation (Hughes 1989b) captures the explanatory success of Special Relativity. (shrink)

The debate over the propriety of cognitive enhancement evokes both enthusiasm and worry. To gain further insight into the reasons that people may have for endorsing or eschewing pharmacological enhancement, we used empirical tools to explore public attitudes towards PE of twelve cognitive, affective, and social domains. Participants from Canada and the United States were recruited using Mechanical Turk and were randomly assigned to read one vignette that described an individual who uses a pill to enhance a single domain. After (...) reading the vignette, participants were asked how comfortable they were with the individual using the enhancement. People were significantly more comfortable when they read about enhancement of certain CAS domains than others. We found a modest negative correlation between comfort level and the degree to which the PE was perceived as changing core features of the person. We also found a modest correlation between comfort level and the degree to which the PE was perceived as improving success in life. Finally, using a sequential mixed method technique, we found that participants who felt uncomfortable about PE use overwhelmingly focused on a lack of need and, to a lesser degree, expressed concerns about safety; those who felt comfortable about PE use most frequently mentioned the safety of the pill and its ability to provide a positive outcome. The data provide novel insights into public enthusiasms and concerns over the use of PE. (shrink)

This paper sets out to unpack the pragmatic structure of refusal—its illocutionary nature, success conditions, and normative effects. I argue that our ordinary concept of refusal captures a whole family of illocutions, comprising acts such as rejecting, declining, and the like, which share the property of being ‘negative second-turn illocutions’. Only _proper refusals_ (i.e. negative replies to permission requests), I submit, require speaker authority. I construe the ‘refusal family’ as a subclass of the directives-commissives intersection. After defending my view against (...) a number of potential objections, I highlight how a theoretically grounded analysis of refusal is not only of intrinsic value, but may also have significant moral and legal implications. (shrink)

Scientists typically use a variety of representations, including different kinds of figures, to present and defend hypotheses. In order to understand the justification of scientific hypotheses, it is essential to understand how visual representations contribute to scientific arguments. Since the logical understanding of arguments involves the truth or falsity of the representations involved, visual representations must have the capacity to bear truth in order to be genuine components of arguments. By drawing on Goodman's analysis of symbol systems, and on Tarski's (...) work on truth, I show that the figures used in science meet this criterion. (shrink)

Context: I extend the enactive account of loving in romantic relationships that I developed with Hanne De Jaegher to the love of nature. Problem: I challenge a universal conceptualization of love of nature that does not account for the differences that are inherent to nature. As an alternative, I offer a situated account of loving a place as participatory sense-making. However, a question arises: How is it possible to communicate with the other-than-human? Method: I use panpsychist and enactive conceptual tools (...) to better define this situated approach to the love of nature and to reply to the research question. In particular, I focus on Mathews’s “becoming native” and the generative tensions that unfold in a dialectic of encounter when a common language is not shared. Results: The fundamental difference experienced in encountering the other-than-human is generative for building up the human-Earth connection if we let each other be listened to. I describe the ethical dimension that permeates this type of “enactive listening” at the core of a situated account of love of nature. Implications: Love of nature is of paramount importance in our current climate crisis characterized by environmental anxiety, despair, and anger. A situated love of nature emphasizes the importance of community-based local interventions to preserve the Earth. Love, thus understood as a fundamental moral and political power, is a catalyst for environmental activism. Constructivist content: My article links to participatory sense-making as defined by De Jaegher and Di Paolo, and De Jaegher’s loving epistemology. It offers a broader understanding of participatory sense-making that includes the other-than-human. It also introduces the new concept of “enactive listening.”. (shrink)

This paper sketches a right-maker account of normative practical reasons along functionalist lines. The approach is contrasted with other similar accounts, in particular John Broome's analysis of reasons as explanations of oughts.

Emotions ( pathè) such as anger, fear, shame, and envy, but also pity, wonder, love and friendship have long been underestimated in Plato’s philosophy. The aim of Emotions in Plato is to provide a consistent account of the role of emotions in Plato’s psychology, epistemology, ethics and political theory. The volume focuses on three main issues: taxonomy of emotions, their epistemic status, and their relevance for the ethical and political theory and practice. This volume, which is the first edited volume (...) entirely dedicated to emotions in Plato’s philosophy, shows how Plato, in many aspects, was positively interested in these affective states in order to support the rule of reason. (shrink)

Publications in contemporary science journals often include figures like graphs, diagrams, photographs, and MRIs, which are presented as support for the hypothesis the author is defending. As a first step to explaining how figures contribute to confirmation, I present an account of visual representation and use examples to show how the visual format is involved in the support those figures provide the authors’ conclusions. I then show that attempts to explain what figures contribute to scientific arguments without analyzing them as (...) visual representations will not succeed. (shrink)

Starting from the standard quantum formalism for a single spin 1/2 system (e.g., an electron), this essay develops a model rich enough not only to afford an explication of symmetry breaking but also to frame questions about how to circumscribe physical possibility on behalf of theories that countenance symmetry breaking.

Past research showed that the ability to focus on one’s internal states positively correlates with the self-regulation of behavior in situations that are accompanied by somatic and/or physiological changes, such as emotions, physical workload, and decision-making. The analysis of moral oriented decision-making can be the first step for better understanding the legal reasoning carried on by the main players in the field, as lawyers are. For this reason, this study investigated the influence of the decision context and interoceptive manipulation on (...) the moral decision-making process in the legal field gathering the responses of two groups of lawyers. A total of 20 lawyers were randomly divided into an experimental group, which was explicitly required to focus the attention on its interoceptive correlates, and a control group, which only received the general instruction to perform the task. Both groups underwent a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, where are presented three different moral conditions and three different offers. Results highlighted a significant increase of Acceptance Rate in those offers that should be considered more equal than fair or unfair ones, associated with a general increase of Reaction Times in the equal offers. Furthermore, the interoceptive manipulation oriented the Lawyers toward a more self-centered decision. This study shows how individual, situational, contextual, and interoceptive factors may influence the moral decision-making of lawyers. Future research in the so-called Neurolaw field is needed to replicate and expand current findings. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, against recent claims by Bermúdez and Toribio , that within the debate about whether perceptual experiences are nonconceptual, ‘state nonconceptualism’ can be a coherent and plausible position. In particular, I explain that state nonconceptualism and content nonconceptualism, when understood in their most plausible and motivated form, presuppose different notions of content. I argue that state nonconceptualism can present a plausible way of unpacking the claim that perceptual experiences are nonconceptual once the notion of content it (...) should presuppose is taken into account; and once this notion of content is clearly distinguished from the one usually presupposed by content nonconceptualism, the criticisms that Bermúdez and Toribio place against state nonconceptualism become ineffective. (shrink)

The need to evaluate the performance of clinical ethics services is widely acknowledged although work in this area is more developed in the United States. In the USA many studies that assess clinical ethics services have utilized empirical methods and assessment criteria. The value of these approaches is thought to rest on their ability to measure the value of services in a demonstrable fashion. However, empirical measures tend to lack ethical content, making their contribution to developments in ethical governance unclear. (...) The steady increase of clinical ethics committees in the UK must be accompanied by efforts to evaluate their performance. As part of this evaluative work it is important to examine how the practice of clinical ethics committees can be informed by empirical measures. (shrink)

In recent years, business ethics and economic scholars have been paying greater attention to the development of commons organizing. The latter refers to the processes by which communities of people work in common in the pursuit of the common good. In turn, this promotes commons organizational designs based on collective forms of common goods production, distribution, management and ownership. In this paper, we build on two main literature streams: the ethical approach based on the theory of the common good of (...) the firm in virtue ethics and the economic approach based on the theory of institutions for collective action developed by Ostrom’s research on common-pool resources to avert the tragedy of the commons. The latter expands to include the novel concepts of new commons, “commoning” and polycentric governance. Drawing on the analysis of what is new in these forms of organizing, we propose a comprehensive model, highlighting the integration of two sets of organizing principles—common good and collective action – and five problem-solving processes to explain the main dimensions of commons organizing. We contribute to business ethics literature by exploring the convergence between the ethical and economic approaches in the development of a commons organizing view. (shrink)

From the earliest application of modern randomized controlled trials in medical research, scientists and observers have deliberated the ethics of randomly allocating study participants to trial control arms. Adaptive RCT designs have been promoted as ethically advantageous over conventional RCTs because they reduce the allocation of subjects to what appear to be inferior treatments. Critical assessment of this claim is important, as adaptive designs are changing medical research, with the potential to significantly shift how clinical trials are conducted. Policy-makers are (...) swiftly moving to encourage greater use of adaptive designs. In 2016, the newly enacted 21st Century Cures Act instructed the Food and Drug Administration to help product sponsors incorporate adaptive methods into proposed clinical trial protocols and applications for investigational drugs and also biological products. In this article, we review the ethical justifications commonly offered for adaptive designs, explore these arguments in the context of actual trials, and contend that clinical equipoise is a useful standard for adaptive-trial ethics. We distinguish between theoretical and clinical equipoise and explain why ethical arguments related to adaptive trials tend to focus on the former. Yet we contend that theoretical equipoise can be an unreliable standard for adaptive ethics. While we contend that clinical equipoise is the most critical principle for the primary ethical concerns posed by adaptive trials, we suggest ethical approaches to deal with some additional concerns unique to adaptive designs. (shrink)

This book provides rigorous analyses of Deleuze's writings on theatre practitioners such as Artaud, Beckett and Carmelo Bene, as well as offering innovative ...

This paper presents the contribution of the pragmatic sociology of critical capacities to the understanding of environmental conflicts. In the field of 'environmental valuation', nowadays colonised by economics, the approach of plural modes (or 'regimes') of engagement provides a sociological understanding of the unequal power of conflicting 'languages of valuation'. This frame entails a shift from 'values' to 'modes of valuation', and links modes of valuation to modes of practical engagement and coordination with the surrounding environment. Different social sources of (...) incommensurability are thus detected and reframed as critical tension within and among modes of human coordination with the environment. (shrink)

In recent years, discussion around memory modification interventions has gained attention. However, discussion around the use of memory interventions in the criminal justice system has been mostly absent. In this paper we start by highlighting the importance memory has for human well-being and personal identity, as well as its role within the criminal forensic setting; in particular, for claiming and accepting legal responsibility, for moral learning, and for retribution. We provide examples of memory interventions that are currently available for medical (...) purposes, but that in the future could be used in the forensic setting to modify criminal offenders’ memories. In this section we contrast the cases of dampening and enhancing memories of criminal offenders. We then present from a pragmatic approach some pressing ethical issues associated with these types of memory interventions. The paper ends up highlighting how these pragmatic considerations can help establish ethically justified criteria regarding the possibility of interventions aimed at modifying criminal offenders’ memories. (shrink)

In Thinking How to Live, Allan Gibbard claims that expressivists can vindicate realism about moral discourse. This paper argues that Gibbard’s expressivism does not provide such a vindication.

There has been an ongoing debate about the best approach in environmental ethics. Bryan Norton believes that “weak anthropocentrism” will yield the best results for public policy, and that it is the most defensible position. In contrast, I have argued that an ecocentric, holistic position is required to deal with the urgent environmental problems that face us, and that position is complemented by the ecosystem approach and complex systems theory. I have called this approach “the ethics of integrity,” and in (...) this paper I show why this perspective suggests better solutions to difficult cases, for which “weak anthropocentrism” fails to provide an answer. (shrink)

For more than 100,000 years, H. sapiens lived as foragers, in small family groups with low reproductive variance. A minority of men were able to father children by two or three women; and a majority of men and women were able to breed. But after the origin of farming around 10,000 years ago, reproductive variance increased. In civilizations which began in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, and then moved on to Greece and Rome, kings collected thousands of women, whose children (...) were supported and guarded by thousands of eunuchs. Just a few hundred years ago, that trend reversed. Obligate sterility ended, and reproductive variance declined. For H. sapiens, as for other organisms, eusociality seems to be an effect of ecological constraints. Civilizations rose up in lake and river valleys, hemmed in by mountains and deserts. Egalitarianism became an option after empty habitats opened up. (shrink)

Background: Psychiatric interventions are a contested area in medicine, not only because of their history of abuses, but also because their therapeutic goal is to affect emotions, thoughts, beliefs...

This paper approaches the much-debated issue of corporate citizenship (CC). Many models depict the development process of CC, and yet attempts to find one extensive definition remain in progress. We argue that more than one type of citizenship may be needed to fully describe the concept. So far, social factors have dominated the definitions of CC, but citizenship functions can also be found in other areas. In fact, for maximum benefit, the type of citizenship should be tied to the sector (...) and business field of the corporation in question. Using data drawn from three internationally operating corporations headquartered in Finland, we introduce three different types of CC that are in line with their core business ideas: cultural citizenship, environmental citizenship and technological citizenship. These new types of citizenships can help in grasping the complexity of business responsibility and ethics, and offer tools for gaining competitive advantage by differentiation. (shrink)

This article proposes a way to disambiguate the evaluative states currently identified as “adaptive preferences” in development literature. It provides a brief analysis of Serene Khader's Deliberative Perfectionist Approach, and demonstrates that distinguishing between adaptive states has important implications for the theory and practice of development intervention. Although I support Khader's general approach and consider my project to be complementary, I argue that the term preferences be replaced with four distinct terms: beliefs, choices, desires, and values. Distinguishing among adaptive states (...) can serve to prevent inappropriate intervention and appreciate the costs of transforming inappropriate adaptations. I argue that adaptive values are especially problematic, given how central a person's values are to their sense of meaning and self. Attempts to transform adaptive values are likely to produce internal conflict, resulting in psychological distress and diminished agency. Furthermore, some values preclude deliberation and comparison given their communal status as infinitely valuable. To deliberate about sacred values is to violate them. The emotional and psychological damage that may result from value transformation is thus likely to be extensive, and must be taken into account when determining whether, and what type of, intervention is justified. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Heck's new argument for content dualism. This argument is based on the claim that conceptual states, but not perceptual states, meet Evans's Generality Constraint. Heck argues that this claim, together with the idea that the kind of content we should attribute to a mental state depends on which generalizations the state satisfies, implies that conceptual states and perceptual states have different kinds of contents. I argue, however, that it is unlikely that there is a plausible (...) reading of the Generality Constraint under which it is non-trivially true both that conceptual states meet it and that perceptual states do not. Therefore, the soundness of Heck's argument is dubious. En este artículo discuto el nuevo argumento de Heck en favor del dualismo de contenido. Este argumento se basa en la afirmación de que los estados conceptuales, pero no los perceptuales, cumplen con el Requisito de Generalidad de Evans. Heck argumenta que esta afirmación, junto con la idea de que el tipo de contenido que debemos atribuir a un estado mental depende de las generalizaciones que el estado satisface, implica que los estados conceptuales tienen un tipo de contenido diferente del de los estados perceptuales. Yo argumento, sin embargo, que es poco probable que haya una interpretación convincente del Requisito de Generalidad según la cual sea verdadero pero no trivial tanto que los estados conceptuales lo satisfacen como que los perceptuales no. Por lo tanto, la solidez del argumento de Heck es dudosa. (shrink)

Constructive and intuitionistic Zermelo-Fraenkel set theories are axiomatic theories of sets in the style of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (ZF) which are based on intuitionistic logic. They were introduced in the 1970's and they represent a formal context within which to codify mathematics based on intuitionistic logic. They are formulated on the basis of the standard first order language of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and make no direct use of inherently constructive ideas. In working in constructive and intuitionistic ZF we can thus (...) to some extent rely on our familiarity with ZF and its heuristics. -/- Notwithstanding the similarities with classical set theory, the concepts of set defined by constructive and intuitionistic set theories differ considerably from that of the classical tradition; they also differ from each other. The techniques utilised to work within them, as well as to obtain metamathematical results about them, also diverge in some respects from the classical tradition because of their commitment to intuitionistic logic. In fact, as is common in intuitionistic settings, a plethora of semantic and proof-theoretic methods are available for the study of constructive and intuitionistic set theories. -/- The entry introduces the main features of Constructive and Intuitionistic ZF and offers links to the relevant bibliography. (shrink)

Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, has proved a problematic ‘classic text’ for feminism. This paper focuses on the liberal concept of self‐ownership to show how the Vindication both confronts and perpetuates the dilemmas of ‘liberal feminism’. Self‐ownership is not a term used by Wollstonecraft herself, but I make use of it in this paper because I believe it captures what she means by ‘independence’, arrived at by a combination of reflection, self‐government and labour. (...) It implies a natural right to resist oppression and arbitrary government and so reaches the heart of Wollstonecraft's argument against patriarchy as a particular form of arbitrary power. As Alan Ryan argues, ‘each of us is obliged to obey the government so long as it upholds our natural rights, but if it violates them, we are not obliged to obey’. As a liberal concept, self‐ownership is fraught with ambiguity for feminism. Donna Dickenson argues that it can be interpreted both as ‘masculinist through and through’ and as ‘the essence of feminism’. Its very ambiguity makes it an appropriate conceptual lens through which to view Wollstonecraft's own contradictory arguments. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Stigmatisierung hat einen erheblichen Einfluss auf die Gesundheit verschiedener gesellschaftlicher Gruppen und trägt zu Ungleichheiten im Gesundheitswesen bei. Sexarbeit ist mit erheblichem sozialem Stigma verbunden, das sich nachteilig auf den Zugang von Sexarbeiter*innen zur Gesundheitsversorgung auswirkt. Die vorliegende explorative Studie gibt erste Einblicke in die Sichtweisen von Sexarbeiter*innen und Berater*innen in Deutschland auf den Zugang, die Bedürfnisse und die Barrieren von Sexarbeiter*innen in Bezug auf die Gesundheitsversorgung. Dabei lag der Fokus auf einem etablierten Netzwerk von Gesundheitsangeboten für Sexarbeiter*innen (...) in Bochum. Methoden Leitfadengestützte Interviews wurden mit 4 Berater*innen durchgeführt, die soziale und medizinische Beratung für Sexarbeiter*innen anbieten, sowie mit 3 Sexarbeiter*innen, die diese Angebote nutzen. Die Interviews wurden mittels qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse nach Kuckartz ausgewertet. Ergebnisse Es zeigten sich verschiedene Hürden bei der Inanspruchnahme von Gesundheitsversorgung, insbesondere aufgrund unzureichender Krankenversicherung oder fehlendem Wissen über den eigenen Krankenversicherungsstatus, Sprachbarrieren, Bürokratie, Mobilität und Diskriminierung in der Gesundheitsversorgung. Diskriminierung aufgrund von Sexarbeit überschnitt sich mit anderen Diskriminierungsformen, wie beispielsweise antislawischem Rassismus oder der Stigmatisierung von Schwangerschaftsabbrüchen. Spezifische Bedürfnisse und Barrieren wurden hinsichtlich psychischer Gesundheit angegeben, die sich als wichtiges Thema für Sexarbeiter*innen erwies. Die bestehenden kostenlosen, anonymen und zugänglichen Angebote für Sexarbeiter*innen, insbesondere aufsuchende Angebote, wurden als hilfreich beschrieben. Sexarbeiter*innen und Berater*innen wiesen auf einen Mangel an Angeboten für unterschiedliche Bedürfnisse von Sexarbeiter*innen hin, die über Tests auf sexuell übertragbare Infektionen und deren Behandlung hinausgehen, z. B. im Bereich der psychischen Gesundheit. Schlussfolgerung Nach wie vor bestehen Barrieren für den Zugang zur Gesundheitsversorgung, von denen viele besonders Sexarbeiter*innen mit Migrationsgeschichten aus osteuropäischen Ländern betreffen. Die Studie zeigt, dass die Etablierung antidiskriminierender Gesundheitsangebote für Sexarbeiter*innen notwendig ist. Bei der Entwicklung solcher Angebote sollten die Perspektiven von Sexarbeiter*innen eine zentrale Rolle einnehmen. (shrink)

Although the expression 'intellectual property' is widely used, it could be argued that the very idea of intellectual property is incoherent. After all, ideas are not like land, houses or clothing; surely they are not the sorts of things that can be owned? I shall examine two arguments - one ontological, one jurisprudential - that put pressure on the coherence of the idea of intellectual property, both leading to the conclusion that intellectual property rights are not genuine property rights, but (...) rights to monopolies. In setting up and responding to the first argument, I discuss the applicability of the type/ token distinction to intellectual property law; a distinction I also appeal to as a way of clarifying my response to the second argument. (shrink)

An “intrinsically mixed” state is a mixed state of a system that is ‘orthogonal’ to every pure state of that system. Although the presence of such states in the quantum theories of infinite systems is well known to those who work with such theories, intrinsically mixed states are virtually unheralded in the philosophical literature. Rob Clifton was thoroughly familiar with intrinsically mixed states. I aim here to introduce them to a wider audience—and to encourage that audience to cultivate their acquaintance (...) by suggesting that intrinsically mixed states undermine assumptions framing standard discussions of the quantum measurement problem. (shrink)

The human brain is in great part what it is because of the functional and structural properties of the 100 billion interconnected neurons that form it. These make it the body’s most complex organ, and the one we most associate with concepts of selfhood and identity. The assumption held by many supporters of human enhancement, transhumanism, and technological posthumanity seems to be that the human brain can be continuously improved, as if it were another one of our machines. In this (...) paper, I focus on some of the ethical issues that we should keep in mind when thinking about memory enhancement interventions. I start with an overview of one of the most precious capacities of the brain, namely memory. Then I analyze the different kinds of memory interventions that exist or are under research. Finally, I point out the issues that we should not forget when we consider enhancing our memories. In this regard, my argument is not against memory enhancement interventions; rather, it concentrates on the need to “keep in mind” what kind of enhancements we want. We should consider whether we want the kind of “enhancements” that will end up making us lose synapse connections, or the kind that promote more use of them. (shrink)

Medical advances in transplantation techniques have driven an exponential increase in the demand for transplantable organs. Unfortunately, policy efforts to bolster the organ supply have been less than effective, failing to provide a stopgap for ever-increasing numbers of patients who await organ transplantation. The number of registrations on waiting lists exceeded 65,245 in early 1999, a 325% increase over the 20,000 that existed 11 years earlier in 1988. Regrettably, more than 4,000 patients die each year while awaiting transplantation.