In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11.4 (2001) 391-400 [Access article in PDF] Bioethics Inside the Beltway A Shooting on Capitol Hill: "The Ruby Satellite System," Mental Illness, and Failure of the American Legal System Peter J. Cohen On 24 July 1998, Russell Eugene Weston, Jr., stormed the United States Capitol, forced his way through a security checkpoint, bypassed a metal detector, and entered the office complex of (...) Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX), the House Majority Whip (Weil 1998). During this period of terror, he shot and killed two officers of the Capitol Police and seriously wounded another as they attempted to end his foray. 1 Weston was severely wounded by several Capital police officers and taken into custody. After being treated for his injuries, he was incarcerated in the District of Columbia. 2On 5 May 1999, Weston was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institute in Butner, North Carolina (United States v. Weston, 69 F. Supp. 2d 99 (D.D.C. 1999), 103), where he remains to this day. He has neither been brought to trial nor received appropriate psychiatric therapy, but continues to be warehoused "in solitary confinement under constant observation... in a psychotic state (United States v. Weston, 255 F.3d 873; LEXIS 16851 (U.S. App. 2001b), 3-4 [LEXIS]). I will briefly detail the legal events responsible for this mad situation and suggest alternative actions that should have been taken at the very onset of the case. Early Chronology Although overtly the crime appeared to be senseless and without any conceivable motivation, Weston believed that his acts were justified and necessary. The story he told to the court-appointed forensic psychiatrist, Sally C. Johnson, M.D., 3 was that while working for NASA in the early 1980s, he had developed a "Ruby Satellite System," a powerful machine that could reverse time. With access to this system, nothing was permanent--the user could simply reverse time and exit from the current scene. However, the "System" was now controlled by cannibals who were developing and spreading "Black Heva," the deadliest disease known to [End Page 391] humankind, similar to HIV or the plague. It resulted from human corpses rotting and turning black. Time was running out, and Weston believed he had to return to override the "Ruby Satellite System" in the Capitol so that he could stem the spread of "Black Heva" and prevent world calamity. He believed that if he were tried, convicted, and even executed, he could simply time reverse himself, place himself in a safe within the Capitol, and subsequently resume his life at whatever point he chose (United States v. Weston, 206 F.3d 9 (D.C. Cir. 2000), 19-20).On 22 April 1999, the district court accepted Dr. Johnson's diagnosis that Weston suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, the symptoms of which were so severe that he would be incapable of understanding the proceedings against him and of assisting in his own defense. On this basis, the court had no difficulty in finding him incompetent to stand trial (U.S. v. Weston 1999, 102).At Weston's initial hearing, Dr. Johnson had testified that medication would be efficacious in treating Weston's delusions: [T]he standard of care in someone suffering from this type of symptom picture would be to treat them with medication.... [T]here is a good likelihood that he'll have a positive response, positive in the sense that his symptoms will diminish in response to treatment.... The potential benefits to treating the defendant far outweigh the risks.... (U.S. v. Weston 1999, 108) The defense presented no expert testimony refuting Dr. Johnson's presentation. The district court then ordered that Weston begin receiving medication in order to render him nondangerous and competent for trial (U.S. v. Weston 1999, 108-9). The Problem Weston refused to be medicated! 4 He has continued to claim that the administration of antipsychotic drugs against his will would violate his Fifth Amendment due process liberty interest in avoiding unwanted bodily intrusion and implicated... (shrink)

These essays deal with the scholarly study of the genesis, transmission, and editorial reconstitution of texts by exploring the connections between textual instability and textual theory, interpretation, and pedagogy. What makes this collection unique is that each essay brings a different theoretical orientation-New Historicism, Poststructuralism, or Feminism-to bear upon a different text, such as Whitman's Leaves of Grass , Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, or hypertext fiction, to explore the dialectical relationship between texts and textuality. The essays bring some (...) of the textual theories that compete with each other today into contact with a broad range of primarily literary textual histories. That texts are intrinsically unstable, frequently consisting of a series of determinate historical versions, has consequences for all students of literature, because different versions of a literary work frequently help shape different readings independently of the interpretations brought to bear upon them. Textual instability of the works is relevant to our understanding of how the meanings of texts are generated. The contributors build on the numerous challenges to the Anglo-American editorial tradition mounted during the past decade by scholars as diverse as Jerome McGann, D.F. McKenzie, Peter Shillingsburg, D.C. Greetham, Hershel Parker, and Hans Walter Gabler. The volume contributes to the paradigm shift in textual scholarship inaugurated by these scholars. Index. (shrink)

The classic, influential essay in 'descriptive metaphysics' by the distinguished English philosopher.

All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, space, and time; but a practical mastery does not entail theoretical understanding. It is that understanding which philosophy seeks to achieve. In this book, one of the most distinguished of living philosophers, assuming no previous knowledge of the subject on the part of the reader, sets out to explain and illustrate a (...) certain conception of the nature of analytical philosophy. Strawson draws on his many years of teaching at Oxford University, during which he refined and developed what he regards as the most productive route to understanding the fundamental structure of human thinking. Among the distinctive features of his exposition are the displacement of an older, reductive conception of philosophical method in favor of elucidating the interconnections between the complex but irreducible notions which form the basic structure of our thinking; and the demonstration that the three traditionally distinguished departments of metaphysics, epistemology, and logic are but three aspects of one unified enquiry. Strawson has produced an elegant work that will be invaluable to students and stimulating for professional philosophers and general readers alike. (shrink)

The species-specific organizational property of speech is a continual mouth open-close alternation, the two phases of which are subject to continual articulatory modulation. The cycle constitutes the syllable, and the open and closed phases are segments framescontent displays that are prominent in many nonhuman primates. The new role of Broca's area and its surround in human vocal communication may have derived from its evolutionary history as the main cortical center for the control of ingestive processes. The frame and content components (...) of speech may have subsequently evolved separate realizations within two general purpose primate motor control systems: (1) a motivation-related medial system, including anterior cingulate cortex and the supplementary motor area, for self-generated behavior, formerly responsible for ancestral vocalization control and now also responsible for frames, and (2) a lateral system, including Broca's area and surround, and Wernicke's area, specialized for response to external input (and therefore the emergent vocal learning capacity) and more responsible for content. (shrink)

An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrainment, and language acquisition) and its impact (...) on how neuroscience is studied is also investigated (with the notion that brains do not passively build models, but instead support the guidance of action). A review of its implications in robotics and engineering includes a discussion of the application of enactive control principles to couple action and perception in robotics as well as the conceptualization of system design in a more holistic, less modular manner. Practical applications that can impact the human condition are reviewed (e.g., educational applications, treatment possibilities for developmental and psychopathological disorders, the development of neural prostheses). All of this foreshadows the potential societal implications of the pragmatic turn. The chapter concludes that an action-oriented approach emphasizes a continuum of interaction between technical aspects of cognitive systems and robotics, biology, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, where the individual is part of a grounded cultural system. (shrink)

Among the objections to the implementation of what I will call "genome editing in human reproduction" is that it does not address any unmet medical need, and therefore fails to meet an important criterion for introducing an unproven procedure with potentially adverse consequences. To be clear: what I mean by GEHR is the use of any one of a number of related biological techniques, such as the CRISPR-Cas9 system, deliberately to modify a functional sequence of DNA in a cell of (...) a human embryo, so that the modified sequence is replicated in the cells of a resulting child and may, without further intervention, be passed on to that child's biological descendants. It is... (shrink)

I expressed agreement with Unger's view of the essential\nnature of personal identity, but dissented from what I took\nto be his view of the value we attach to its preservation;\nsaying, for example, that, in common, I think with many\nothers, I would prefer being replaced or succeeded' by a\nnumerically distinct continuator' with "qualitatively"\nidentical memories and mental and physical characteristics\nto surviving as the "numerically" identical person with\nsevere impairment of memory and abilities.

Henry David Thoreau, though often characterised as individualist or apolitical, is in fact an important link between Jeffersonian agrarian republicanism and environmentalism. Like the Jeffersonians, Thoreau espouses a political economy of citizenship, criticises modern capitalism, and celebrates simplicity and personal independence. However, Thoreau rejects the Jeffersonians' focus on conquest of the wilderness and economic industriousness, both of which were meant to promote virtue. Thoreau advocates preservation of wild nature as essential for cultivating virtue and regards nature as a community deserving (...) respect and protection. He criticises an emphasis on economic industriousness as promoting overwork, environmental destruction and greed. Thoreau emerges as a complex figure whose legacy points in two contrasting directions: toward a more ecologically responsible or sustainable republicanism embracing preservation of a spectrum of landscapes from wilderness to agrarian, and also toward a problematic, depoliticising separation between human beings and nature. (shrink)

This commentary analyzes the target article to determine whether shared-intention development could be implemented and tested in robotic systems. The analysis indicates that such an implementation should be feasible and will likely rely on a construction-based approach similar to that employed in the construction grammar framework.

This paper examines how people in West Africa are reacting to the Ebola virus disease, an epidemic presently prevalent in the region. Certain lifestyle changes are suggested. Additionally, the heart of the paper focuses on the request by governments to be allowed access to experimental drugs, such as Zmapp and TKM-Ebola, for their infected populations. The author argues that granting such a request would circumvent research ethics procedures, which could potentially constitute significant risk to users of the drugs. The Pfizer (...) Kano meningitis trial of 1996 is cited as an example to buttress how unapproved drugs could prove fatal. (shrink)