Bioethicists frequently call for empirical researchers to engage participants and community members in their research, but don't themselves typically engage community members in their normative research. In this article, we describe an effort to include members of the public in normative discussions about the risks, potential benefits, and ethical responsibilities of social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research. We reflect on what might—and might not— be gained from engaging the public in normative scholarship and on lessons learned about public perspectives on (...) the risks and potential benefits of SBG research and the responsible conduct and communication of such research. We also provide procedural lessons for others in bioethics who are interested in engaging members of the public in their research. (shrink)

Since 2011, the research community had waited with bated breath as regulators contemplated for the first time bringing secondary research with nonidentifiable biospecimens under the Common Rule and dramatically tightening the criteria for waiving consent to biospecimen research. After considerable pushback from both researchers and patients and amid rumors of intractable disagreement among Common Rule agencies, the Final Rule published on the last day of President Obama's administration left out these troubling changes, and there was a collective sigh of relief. (...) Relief is appropriate, but celebration premature: researchers have little reason to avail themselves of the new broad consent option offered in the Final Rule, and the question of whether biospecimens ought to be treated as inherently identifiable has merely been postponed. (shrink)

by the question in its being an answer, if only in a circumstantial (i. e. inessential) manner. One indeed must question oneself in order to remember, says Plato, but the dialectic, which would be scientific, must be something else even if it remains a play of question and answer. This contradiction did not escape Aristotle: he split the scientific from the dialectic and logic from argumentation whose respective theories he was led to conceive in order to clearly define their boundaries (...) and specificities. As for Plato, he found in the famous theory of Ideas what he sought in order to justify knowledge as that which is supposed to hold its truth only from itself. What do Ideas mean within the framework of our approach? In what consists the passage from rhetoric to ontology which leads to the denaturation of argumentation? When Socrates asked, for example, "What is virtue?", he thought one could not answer such a question because the answer refers to a single proposition, a single truth, whereas the formulation of the question itself does not indicate this unicity. For any answer, another can be given and thus continuously, if necessary, until eventually one will come across an incompatibility. Now, to a question as to what X, Y, or Z is, one can answer in many ways and nothing in the question itself prohibits multiplicity. Virtue is courage, is justice, and so on. (shrink)

According to the traditional view, meaning presents itself under the form of some kind of identity.

Using mobile health research as an extended example, this article provides an overview of when the Common Rule “applies” to a variety of activities, what might be meant when one says that the Common Rule does or does not “apply,” the extent to which these different meanings of “apply” matter, and, when the Common Rule does apply, how it applies.

Michel Meyer offers a new beginning for philosophy rooted in a theory of questioning that he calls "problematology." Meyer argues that a new beginning is necessary in order to resituate philosophy, science, and linguistic analysis, and he proposes a global view of rationality by returning to the nature of questioning itself. For Meyer, philosophy does not solve problems or give answers but instead shows how propositions are related to a whole field of questions that give them meaning. Reason is identified (...) not with answers but with the question-answer process. Meyer pursues this new theory of reason and meaning in a critique of Western philosophy from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Foucault. He provides a detailed analysis of Descartes' notion of radical doubt and demonstrates its implications for the subsequent philosophical tradition that ignored the questioning process while pursuing an unshakable foundation for knowledge. Meyer argues that recent work in rhetoric points toward a theory of radical questioning and claims that the methods of rhetoric and argumentation must be turned back on philosophy itself in order to recover the original significance of metaphysics as the science of ultimate questions. (shrink)

Contemporary or postmodern thought is based on the lack of foundation. The impossibility of having a principle for philosophy has become a position of principle. As a result, rhetoric has taken over. Content has given way to the priority of form. Michel Meyer's book aims at showing that philosophy as foundational is possible and necessary, and that rhetoric can flourish alongside, but the conception of reason must be changed. Questioning rather than answering must be considered as the guiding principle. What (...) the author calls "problematology" is not only the study of questioning but also the analysis of the reasons why it has been repressed throughout the history of philosophy. Since Socrates, philosophers and scientists have reasoned by asking questions and by trying to solve them. Questioning has been the unthematized foundation of philosophy and thought at large. Philosophers, however, have preferred another norm, granting privilege to the answers and thereby repressing the questions into the realm of the preliminary and unessential. They have not considered their discursive practice as being based upon some question-answer complex, but exclusively on the results they call propositions. Meyer argues that propositions ensue from corresponding questions, and not the other way around. Anthropology, ontology, reasoning, and language thus receive a new interpretation in the problematological conception of philosophy, a conception in which questions and problems are thematized afresh. The theory of language in everyday use, in argumentation, or in literary analysis receives a full and decisive treatment here, making Meyer's question-view one of the leading theories in contemporary thought, alongside his rhetoric for which he is already well known. (shrink)

For the passions represent a force of excess and lawlessness in humanity that produces troubling, confusing paradoxes.In this book, noted European philosopher Michel Meyer offers a wide-ranging exegesis, the first of its kind, that ...

Contemporary or postmodern thought is based on the lack of foundation. The impossibility of having a principle for philosophy has become a position of principle. As a result, rhetoric has taken over. Content has given way to the priority of form. Michel Meyer's book aims at showing that philosophy as foundational is possible and necessary, and that rhetoric can flourish alongside, but the conception of reason must be changed. Questioning rather than answering must be considered as the guiding principle. What (...) the author calls "problematology" is not only the study of questioning but also the analysis of the reasons why it has been repressed throughout the history of philosophy. Since Socrates, philosophers and scientists have reasoned by asking questions and by trying to solve them. Questioning has been the unthematized foundation of philosophy and thought at large. Philosophers, however, have preferred another norm, granting privilege to the answers and thereby repressing the questions into the realm of the preliminary and unessential. They have not considered their discursive practice as being based upon some question-answer complex, but exclusively on the results they call propositions. Meyer argues that propositions ensue from corresponding questions, and not the other way around. Anthropology, ontology, reasoning, and language thus receive a new interpretation in the problematological conception of philosophy, a conception in which questions and problems are thematized afresh. The theory of language in everyday use, in argumentation, or in literary analysis receives a full and decisive treatment here, making Meyer's question-view one of the leading theories in contemporary thought, alongside his rhetoric for which he is already well known. (shrink)

Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca founded the Brussels school of argumentation in 1958, when they published their famous Traité de l'argumentation. Even if, in Brussels, Eugène Dupréel had already set out to rehabilitate the Sophists, the intellectual atmosphere in the French-speaking world was not very propitious for rhetoric. Most French intellectuals were plunged into ideological debates linked to the intellectual monopoly of the French communist party on societal issues. Free discussion was certainly not very topical. It was only after the (...) fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, five years after Perelman's death, that rhetoric began to draw increasing attention. His ideas then gained momentum in France, as .. (shrink)

The Nature of Problematic Knowledge by MICHEL MEYER An interdisciplinary reader on questions and questioning, such as this one, is based on the evidence ...

In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. (...) SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a “sensitive” phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk‐benefit profile. (shrink)

Many feel the Common Rule treats an unwieldy range of activities identically under the monolithic label "human subjects research." Past objections centering on the conflation of biomedical and behavioral research have gained new currency with the increase in biobanking and Internet-based research. A more nuanced approach to research is overdue. Regulation will no doubt remain a major component of any new approach. But in some research contexts, investigators and subjects should be permitted to reach voluntary, informed agreements about certain aspects (...) of their relationship.Consider the National Institutes of Health's new "Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research."1 The guidelines owe their existence to the NIH's .. (shrink)

The rejection of rhetoric has been a constant theme in Western thought since Plato. The presupposition of such a debasement lies at the foundation of a certain view of Reason that I have called propositionalism, and which is analyzed in this article. The basic tenets of propositionalism are that truth is exclusive, i.e. it does not allow for any alternative, and that there is always only one proposition which must be true, the opposite one being false. Necessity and uniqueness are (...) the ideals of propositionalism. But the question of the necessity of such a necessity is bound to arise. Foundationalism and propositionalism are intrinsically related. Since necessity excludes alternatives, rhetoric, which is based on the possibility of opposite standpoints, is unavoidably devalued as the crippled child of Reason, identical to sophistry or eristic. But propositionalism cannot justify itself and provide a justification for its own foundation without circle or contraditction. Since it responds to the problem of eradicating problems and alternatives through propositional entities, propositionalism is ultimately based on questioning to which it replies in the mode of denial. The unavowed foundation of Reason is therefore the question of questioning, even though this very question is suppressed as propositionalism. The trace of such a question is not only historical, but can also be seen, for instance, in the role played by the principle of contradiction in the constitution of propositional Reason (Artitotle): opposite “propositions” are not the expression of a problematic situation, they are either possible or successively unique propositions.We want to replace propositionalism by problematology which allows for the conceptualization of alternatives, thereby rendering a true rhetoric possible. Argumentation cannot then be equated with eristic any more, as propositionalism maintained.Rationality must be seen as having questioning as its true starting-point. Reason must be rhetorical if it is to survive the death of propositionalism which took place after the radical criticisms of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Even if it is still hard ffor philosophers and rhetoricians to think within another framework and even though they prefer endlessly to deconstauct the old one instead of changing it, problematology is bound to impose itself as the new voice for rationality, because Reason has always endeavored to solve problems. Propositionalism has been only one way of conceiving problems, based on the view that solutions could be but the suppression of questioning. (shrink)

Perelman a remis à l'honneur la rhétorique en 1958 et l'a appliquée à la philosophie morale, politique et juridique aussitôt, montrant ainsi la fécondité de son approche. Reprenant l'œuvre d'Aristote et la poursuivant, il a fait de la rhétorique et de l'argumentation la nouvelle matrice des sciences humaines après la mort du structuralisme. A l'occasion du centenaire de sa naissance, les auteurs réunis ici lui rendent hommage, mais aussi poursuivent, par leurs propres recherches, l'idée que la rhétorique comme l'argumentation sont (...) centrales. (shrink)

La réalité est au centre du débat en science comme en philosophie. De l'infiniment petit à l'infiniment grand, de la mécanique quantique à la relativité, les conceptions s'affrontent, et parfois se complètent. Que peut nous dire le philosophe sur ces questions? Pour y répondre, Michel Meyer a développé une approche nouvelle, la problématologie ou théorie du questionnement. Le savant interroge le réel, se livre à des expériences qui sont des mises à l'épreuve d'alternatives, tout comme l'homme de la rue affronte (...) le réel, qui n'est jamais donné, en l'interrogeant également. Mais en quoi consiste une pensée qui ne se mesure plus à l'aune du jugement, mais au questionnement dont il est issu? Michel Meyer élabore ici une systématisation de l'interrogativité, qui oblige à repenser les catégories aussi bien que les principes de l'esprit humain qui servent à concevoir la réalité scientifique mais aussi quotidienne. La réalité n'est pas tant un contenu, toujours variable d'époque à époque, qu'une fonction, celle qui permet de maintenir la différence entre nos questions, voire nos souhaits, et les réponses qui s'en détachent, pour valoir comme telles. (shrink)

Comment procede la science? Comment se constitue-t-elle et comment progresse-t-elle? Telles sont les questions fondamentales que traite l'auteur dans cet ouvrage qui est original tant par ses aspects historiques que par ses analyses thematiques. Pour la premiere fois dans les pays de langue francaise, l'interpretation neo-positiviste de la science est etudiee en detail au travers de ses representants contemporains : Carnap, Hempel, Popper. L'auteur remonte aux racines kantiennes du neo-positivisme. En se situant au-dela du logicisme reducteur et du psychologisme irrationaliste, (...) Decouverte et justification en science s'attache a mettre en evidence l'activite questionnante du processus de recherche scientifique, et a demontrer le mecanisme logique qui engendre les decouvertes. A cote de la logique traditionnelle qui est celle de la justification, il existe une autre logique, irreductible au calcul mathematique, qui est la metaphorisation. Celle-ci, en tant qu'elle est la demarche de tout esprit createur de resultats, se differencie des processus de recherche tels qu'ils ont ete analyses jusqu'ici : les conceptions de Popper et de Kuhn, ainsi que la theorie de l'induction de Hume, de l'abduction de Peirce, de la retroduction de Hanson, sans oublier l'associationnisme et l'intuitionnisme chers aux psychologistes, font l'objet d'un examen approfondi. L'auteur envisage egalement le langage de la science en termes de questionnement. Le savant, comme tout locuteur, parle de ce qui fait question pour lui, meme si le probleme pose dont il est question dans son discours demeure implicite a titre de presuppose. Les theories de Frege, de Russell et de Wittgenstein sur la formalisation des langages se trouvent integrees dans une vision unitaire de l'activite discursive, pour laquelle le contexte d'interrogation et de reponse situe toute intelligibilite possible. (shrink)