Using data obtained during a retrospective interview study of 30 women who had undergone genetic testing—BRCA1/2mutation searching—this paper describes how women, previously diagnosed with breast/ovarian cancer, perceive their role in generating genetic information about themselves and their families. It observes that when describing their motivations for undergoing DNA testing and their experiences of disclosing genetic information within the family these women provide care based ethical justifications for their actions. Finally, it argues that generating genetic information and disclosing this information to (...) kin raise different types of ethical issues. The implications of these findings for ethical debates about informed choice in the context of genetic testing are discussed. (shrink)

It has been widely reported that women are underrepresented in academic philosophy as faculty and students. This article investigates whether this representation may also occur in the domain of journal article publishing. Our study looked at whether women authors were underrepresented as authors in elite ethics journals — Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs, the Journal of Political Philosophy, and the Journal of Moral Philosophy — between 2004-2014, relative to the proportion of women employed in academic ethics (broadly construed). We found (...) that women are indeed underrepresented overall in prestigious ethics journal publishing. Though this is not our focus, we discuss possible causes for this finding, such as top ethics journals’ tendency not to publish much feminist philosophy; the impact of women’s lesser professional status or rank within philosophy on their prospects for, and success in, journal publishing; and the review process itself, which may disadvantage or discourage women authors — perhaps especially when their gender, rank, and affiliation are known to the editor or reviewer, or if their work is explicitly feminist. We discuss possible avenues for future research on the "woman problem" in philosophy, noting how our study relates to existing research on this issue. (shrink)

Long‐term potentiation (LTP) of excitatory synapses is a leading model to explain the concept of information storage in the brain. Multiple mechanisms contribute to LTP, but central amongst them is an increased sensitivity of the postsynaptic membrane to neurotransmitter release. This sensitivity is predominantly determined by the abundance and localization of AMPA‐type glutamate receptors (AMPARs). A combination of AMPAR structural data, super‐resolution imaging of excitatory synapses, and an abundance of electrophysiological studies are providing an ever‐clearer picture of how AMPARs are (...) recruited and organized at synaptic junctions. Here, we review the latest insights into this process, and discuss how both cytoplasmic and extracellular receptor elements cooperate to tune the AMPAR response at the hippocampal CA1 synapse. (shrink)

Judgments concerning animals have arisen across a variety of established practice areas. There is, however, no publicly available repository of judgments concerning the emerging practice area of animal protection law. This has hindered the identification of individual animal protection law judgments and comprehension of the scale of animal protection law made by courts. Thus, we detail the creation of an initial animal protection law repository using natural language processing and machine learning techniques. This involved domain expert classification of 500 judgments (...) according to whether or not they were concerned with animal protection law. 400 of these judgments were used to train various models, each of which was used to predict the classification of the remaining 100 judgments. The predictions of each model were superior to a baseline measure intended to mimic current searching practice, with the best performing model being a support vector machine (SVM) approach that classified judgments according to term frequency—inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) values. Investigation of this model consisted of considering its most influential features and conducting an error analysis of all incorrectly predicted judgments. This showed the features indicative of animal protection law judgments to include terms such as ‘welfare’, ‘hunt’ and ‘cull’, and that incorrectly predicted judgments were often deemed marginal decisions by the domain expert. The TF-IDF SVM was then used to classify non-labelled judgments, resulting in an initial animal protection law repository. Inspection of this repository suggested that there were 175 animal protection judgments between January 2000 and December 2020 from the Privy Council, House of Lords, Supreme Court and upper England and Wales courts. (shrink)

Questions are, in many respects, the hallmarks of the philosopher's trade. They are passed down from one generation to the next and yet, throughout history, philosophers have had relatively little to say about questions. In particular, few have asked or tried to answer the question ‘what is a question'. I call this the ‘Question Question’ and I offer an answer to it in this paper, furnishing philosophical analysis with the results of a large online survey, which has been running for (...) more than a decade. (shrink)

A common philosophical account of expertise contends that (a) the good of expertise lies in the fact that it is grounded in reliably true beliefs or knowledge in a domain and (b) rejecting this truth-linked view threatens the authority of experts and opens one to epistemic relativism. I argue that both of these claims are implausible, and I show how epistemic authority and objectivity can be grounded in the current state of understanding and skill in a domain. Further, I argue (...) that what I call a ‘cognitive systems’ approach is consistent with this domain-linked account of expert authority, is empirically supported, and provides a philosophical foundation for both empirical and conceptual work on the nature and scope of expertise. (shrink)

What's Good on TV? Understanding Ethics Through Television presents an introduction to the basic theories and concepts of moral philosophy using concrete examples from classic and contemporary television shows. Utilizes clear examples from popular contemporary and classic television shows, such as The Office, Law and Order, Star Trek and Family Guy, to illustrate complex philosophical concepts Designed to be used as a stand-alone or supplementary introductory ethics text Features case studies, study questions, and suggested readings Episodes mentioned are from a (...) wide variety of television shows, and are easily accessible Offers a balanced treatment of a number of controversial ethical issues including environmental ethics, animal welfare, abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment, assisted suicide, censorship and the erosion of values Includes a companion website at http://whatsgoodontv.webs.com. (shrink)

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005) is designed to measure the tendency to override a prepotent response alternative that is incorrect and to engage in further reflection that leads to the correct response. It is a prime measure of the miserly information processing posited by most dual process theories. The original three-item test may be becoming known to potential participants, however. We examined a four-item version that could serve as a substitute for the original. Our data show that it (...) displays a.58 correlation with the original version and that it has very similar relationships with cognitive ability, various thinking dispositions, and with several other rational thinking tasks. Combining the two versions into a seven-item test resulted in a measure of miserly processing with substantial reliability (.72). The seven-item version was a strong independent predictor of performance on rational thinking tasks after the variance accounted for by cognitive ability and thinking dispositions had been partialled out. (shrink)

Algorithmic fairness is a new interdisciplinary field of study focused on how to measure whether a process, or algorithm, may unintentionally produce unfair outcomes, as well as whether or how the potential unfairness of such processes can be mitigated. Statistical discrimination describes a set of informational issues that can induce rational (i.e., Bayesian) decision-making to lead to unfair outcomes even in the absence of discriminatory intent. In this article, we provide overviews of these two related literatures and draw connections between (...) them. The comparison illustrates both the conflict between rationality and fairness and the importance of endogeneity (e.g., “rational expectations” and “self-fulfilling prophecies”) in defining and pursuing fairness. Taken in concert, we argue that the two traditions suggest a value for considering new fairness notions that explicitly account for how the individual characteristics an algorithm intends to measure may change in response to the algorithm. (shrink)

Background Improving the ways in which routinely-collected mental health data are shared could facilitate substantial advances in research and treatment. However, this process should only be undertaken in partnership with those who provide such data. Despite relatively widespread investigation of public perspectives on health data sharing more generally, there is a lack of research on the views of people with mental illness. Methods Twelve people with lived experience of mental illness took part in semi-structured interviews via online video software. Participants (...) had experience of a broad range of mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addiction. Interview questions sought to establish how participants felt about the use of routinely-collected health data for research purposes, covering different types of health data, what health data should be used for, and any concerns around its use. Results Thematic analysis identified four overarching themes: benefits of sharing mental health data, concerns about sharing mental health data, safeguards, and data types. Participants were clear that health data sharing should facilitate improved scientific knowledge and better treatments for mental illness. There were concerns that data misuse could become another way in which individuals and society discriminate against people with mental illness, for example through insurance premiums or employment decisions. Despite this there was a generally positive attitude to sharing mental health data as long as appropriate safeguards were in place. Conclusions There was notable strength of feeling across participants that more should be done to reduce the suffering caused by mental illness, and that this could be partly facilitated by well-managed sharing of health data. The mental health research community could build on this generally positive attitude to mental health data sharing by following rigorous best practice tailored to the specific concerns of people with mental illness. (shrink)

The Vimalakirti Sutra, one of the most influential works of the Mahayana Buddhist canon, is of particular importance in the Ch'an or Zen sect.

In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.

Ethical training in graduate programs is an important part of the professional development process. Such training has taken a position of prominence in both counseling and clinical psychology but seems to be lagging behind in the field of sport psychology. A debate exists about whether such training is necessary and, if so, how it should be provided. An important step in better understanding these issues is to identify how such training is currently taking place. This study surveyed the program directors (...) of sport psychology programs listed in the Directory of Graduate Programs in Applied Sport Psychology (Burke, Sachs, & Schrader, 2002) about the ethical training that takes place in their programs and their perceptions of the preparedness of the students in their programs. Of those contacted, 54% (n = 47) responded to the e-mail based survey. The results from these respondents indicated that 64.4% of programs require training in ethics and that the training was most commonly integrated into other nonethics courses. Overall, respondents did not feel as if students were completely prepared for either the ethical or legal issues that they will face in their professional careers. The importance of ethical training and suggestions for improving ethical training are discussed. (shrink)

In this article I address the ethical implications of the legal issues the U. S. Supreme Court resolved in New York Times v. Sullivan and its progeny. In a ruling with far-reaching moral implications, the Court addressed truthtelling-journalism's primary ethical directive-and undermined it by favoring other moral principles and social goals. Much of this article focuses on the ethical arguments addressed to the Court in legal briefs that sought rulings that would support fundamental principals of ethical journalism. The creation of (...) actual malice as a legal concept in the Sullivan case owes more to the Court's pursuit of other moral and social values than strict legal reasoning, according to the descriptive theory of pragmatic instrumentalism, which informs this analysis. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to augment the business values literature by building upon research that claims individual value frames are subject to hierarchical re-scaling, value redefinition, and value removal or induction. In contrast to the person-organization cultural fit approach of value congruence, we postulate that the cognitive discomforts resulting from just-world needs, self-identity completion and self-concept maintenance, as moderated by contextual and dispositional variables, are resolved through the selection and accentuation of legitimating and justifying values that ultimately cast (...) the nature of the world as fair, complete central self-identities, and affirm the self. Research and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)