The Protein Ontology (PRO; http://proconsortium.org) formally defines protein entities and explicitly represents their major forms and interrelations. Protein entities represented in PRO corresponding to single amino acid chains are categorized by level of specificity into family, gene, sequence and modification metaclasses, and there is a separate metaclass for protein complexes. All metaclasses also have organism-specific derivatives. PRO complements established sequence databases such as UniProtKB, and interoperates with other biomedical and biological ontologies such as the Gene Ontology (GO). PRO relates to (...) UniProtKB in that PRO’s organism-specific classes of proteins encoded by a specific gene correspond to entities documented in UniProtKB entries. PRO relates to the GO in that PRO’s representations of organism-specific protein complexes are subclasses of the organism-agnostic protein complex terms in the GO Cellular Component Ontology. The past few years have seen growth and changes to the PRO, as well as new points of access to the data and new applications of PRO in immunology and proteomics. Here we describe some of these developments. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an argument for pannormism, the view according to which there are normative properties all the way down. In particular, I argue for what I call the trickling down principle, which says that if there is a metaphysically basic normative property, then, if whatever instantiates it has a ground, that ground instantiates it as well.

In this paper I argue against grounding being necessarily well-founded, and provide some reasons to think it's actually not well-founded.

In this paper I argue that composition as identity entails unrestricted composition. I also briefly consider a new take on the special composition question.

I show that a particular version of Hume's Dictum together with the falsity of Composition as Identity entails an incoherency, so either that version of Hume's Dictum is false or Composition as Identity is true. I conditionally defend the particular version of Hume's Dictum in play, and hence conditionally conclude that Composition as Identity is true. I end by suggesting an alternative way out for a persistent foe of Composition as Identity, namely mereological nihilism.

In her 2004 book Carol Gould addresses the fundamental issue of democratizing globalization, that is to say of finding ways to open transnational institutions and communities to democratic participation by those widely affected by their decisions. The book develops a framework for expanding participation in crossborder decisions, arguing for a broader understanding of human rights and introducing a new role for the ideas of care and solidarity at a distance. Reinterpreting the idea of universality to accommodate a multiplicity of cultural (...) perspectives, the author takes up a number of applied issues, including the persistence of racism, cultural rights, women's human rights, the democratic management of firms, the use of the Internet to enhance political participation, and the importance of empathy and genuine democracy in understanding terrorism and responding to it. Accessibly written with a minimum of technical jargon this is a major contribution to political philosophy. (shrink)

In this short piece I provide an interpretation of David Lewis' thesis of Composition as Identity.

I argue that Composition as Identity blocks the plural version of Cantor's Theorem, and that therefore the plural version of Cantor's Theorem can no longer be uncritically appealed to. As an example, I show how this result blocks a recent argument by Hawthorne and Uzquiano.

In this paper I argue that, in addition to having an obligation to resist the oppression of others, people have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression. This obligation to oneself, I argue, is grounded in a Kantian duty of self-respect.

Psychologists and philosophers have not yet resolved what they take implicit attitudes to be; and, some, concerned about limitations in the psychometric evidence, have even challenged the predictive and theoretical value of positing implicit attitudes in explanations for social behavior. In the midst of this debate, prominent stakeholders in science have called for scientific communities to recognize and countenance implicit bias in STEM fields. In this paper, I stake out a stakeholder conception of implicit bias that responds to these challenges (...) in ways that are responsive to the psychometric evidence, while also being resilient to the sorts of disagreements and scientific progress that would not undermine the soundness of this call. Along the way, my account advocates for attributing collective (group-level) implicit attitudes rather than individual-level implicit attitudes. This position raises new puzzles for future research on the relationship (metaphysical, epistemic, and ethical) between collective implicit attitudes and individual-level attitudes. (shrink)

Representing species-specific proteins and protein complexes in ontologies that are both human and machine-readable facilitates the retrieval, analysis, and interpretation of genome-scale data sets. Although existing protin-centric informatics resources provide the biomedical research community with well-curated compendia of protein sequence and structure, these resources lack formal ontological representations of the relationships among the proteins themselves. The Protein Ontology (PRO) Consortium is filling this informatics resource gap by developing ontological representations and relationships among proteins and their variants and modified forms. Because (...) proteins are often functional only as members of stable protein complexes, the PRO Consortium, in collaboration with existing protein and pathway databases, has launched a new initiative to implement logical and consistent representation of protein complexes. We describe here how the PRO Consortium is meeting the challenge of representing species-specific protein complexes, how protein complex representation in PRO supports annotation of protein complexes and comparative biology, and how PRO is being integrated into existing community bioinformatics resources. The PRO resource is accessible at http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro/. (shrink)

I motivate and articulate a dispositional account of aversive racism. By conceptualizing and measuring attitudes in terms of their full distribution, rather than in terms of their mode or mean preference, my account of dispositional attitudes gives ambivalent attitudes (qua attitude) the ability to predict aggregate behavior. This account can be distinguished from other dispositional accounts of attitude by its ability to characterize ambivalent attitudes such as aversive racism at the attitudinal rather than the sub-attitudinal level and its deeper appreciation (...) of the analogy between traits and attitudes. (shrink)

Introduction to Xenophon's work and overview of his philosophy. _Greece and Rome_ New Surveys in the Classics Vol 48.

On the formation of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Glasgow. -/- When the University of Glasgow’s new 'Crichton College' opened its doors in September 1999, its small staff had that rare opportunity in an academic’s career to launch a new curriculum based on clearly enunciated ideals. In the following six years under the direction of Professor Rex C. Taylor, those ideals remained firm even as numbers grew and external circumstances mutated. The theme of this book concerns (...) the ideas, activities and problems – intellectual, curricular and administrative – that shaped the University of Glasgow Crichton Campus during its first six years. Its dozen contributors provide varied perspectives on the problems of creation. (shrink)

This paper explores an emerging sub-field of both empirical bioethics and experimental philosophy, which has been called “experimental philosophical bioethics” (bioxphi). As an empirical discipline, bioxphi adopts the methods of experimental moral psychology and cognitive science; it does so to make sense of the eliciting factors and underlying cognitive processes that shape people’s moral judgments, particularly about real-world matters of bioethical concern. Yet, as a normative discipline situated within the broader field of bioethics, it also aims to contribute to substantive (...) ethical questions about what should be done in a given context. What are some of the ways in which this aim has been pursued? In this paper, we employ a case study approach to examine and critically evaluate four strategies from the recent literature by which scholars in bioxphi have leveraged empirical data in the service of normative arguments. (shrink)

According to proponents of the extended mind, bio-external resources, such as a notebook or a smartphone, are candidate parts of the cognitive and mental machinery that realises cognitive states and processes. The present chapter discusses three areas of ethical concern associated with the extended mind, namely mental privacy, mental manipulation, and agency. We also examine the ethics of the extended mind from the standpoint of three general normative frameworks, namely, consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics.

All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of particular religious traditions may avail where generic philosophical solutions fall short. With attention to the boredom and narcissism critiques, intimations of deathlessness in Śāntideva's radical altruism, and recent Christian debates on the soul and the intermediate state, I propose two criteria for a coherent religion-specific belief in immortality: (1) the belief is supported by a fully realized religious tradition, (2) the belief satisfies the demand for (...) self-transcendence as well as for self-preservation. Where self-transcendence and self-preservation are kept in balance, and where the whole idea rests upon the lattice-work of a fully realized religious tradition, immortality is a fitting object of belief. Moreover, such belief is compatible with considerable speculative freedom concerning matter and spirit, body and soul, and personal identity over time. (shrink)

We discuss potential biorisks from large language models (LLMs). AI assistants based on LLMs such as ChatGPT have been shown to significantly reduce barriers to entry for actors wishing to synthesize dangerous, potentially novel pathogens and chemical weapons. The harms from deploying such bioagents could be further magnified by AI-assisted misinformation. We endorse several policy responses to these dangers, including prerelease evaluations of biomedical AIs by subject-matter experts, enhanced surveillance and lab screening procedures, restrictions on AI training data, and access (...) controls on biomedical AI. We conclude with a suggestion about future research directions in bioethics. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward the triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not (...) stem from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels–but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favoured utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas–and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarisation surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how the dominant methods in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) may deliver insights that do not generalise to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to identify certain consonances between contemporary liberalism and classical pragmatism. I identify four of the most trenchant criticisms of classical liberalism presented by pragmatist figures such as James, Peirce, Dewey, Addams, and Hocking: that liberalism overemphasizes negative liberty, that it is overly individualistic, that its pluralism is suspect, that it is overly abstract. I then argue that these deficits of liberalism in its historical incarnations are being addressed by contemporary liberals. Contemporary liberals, I show, have (...) taken on board a surprising number of classical pragmatist insights and have responded to a surprising number of classical pragmatist criticisms. I thus argue that both contemporary pragmatism and contemporary liberalism have much to gain by joining forces. (shrink)

Loneliness in medicine is a serious problem not just for patients, for whom illness is intrinsically isolating, but also for physicians in the contemporary condition of medicine. We explore this problem by investigating the ideal physician-patient relationship, whose analogy with friendship has held enduring normative appeal. Drawing from Talbot Brewer and Nir Ben-Moshe, we argue that this appeal lies in a dynamic form of companionship incompatible with static models of friendship-like physician-patient relationships: a mutual refinement of embodied virtue that draws (...) both persons together. The ideal physician-patient relationship has a dialectical character that fosters each member's improvement of phenomenologically recognizing and embodying moral virtues. A key component of this dynamic is a commitment to the common goal of the patient's health, realized through joint interactivities and conversations over time. The physician's presence to the patient's suffering—understood best as an alienating phenomenological condition for the patient—orients and discloses possibilities for virtuous caregiving by structuring the meanings of the goals, conversations, and joint narrative constitutive of their relationship. Presence to suffering, paradoxically, is perhaps an important prerequisite for this dynamic partnership. These activities dialectically build an interpretive horizon of understanding through which moral goods and character refinement—in and for the other—may become revealed for both persons in their shared being-in-the-world. This analysis of suffering, mood, and revealing of (possible) moral goods has implications for addressing the modern problem of loneliness for patients and physicians, who are increasingly inhibited from building flourishing relationships with each other. (shrink)

Under the traditional system of peer-reviewed publication, the degree of prestige conferred to authors by successful publication is tied to the degree of the intellectual rigor of its peer review process: ambitious scientists do well professionally by doing well epistemically. As a result, we should expect journal editors, in their dual role as epistemic evaluators and prestige-allocators, to have the power to motivate improved author behavior through the tightening of publication requirements. Contrary to this expectation, I will argue that the (...) publication bias literature in academic medicine demonstrates that editor interventions have had limited effectiveness in improving the health of the publication and trial registration record, suggesting that much stronger interventions are needed. (shrink)

Achieving space situational awareness requires, at a minimum, the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Leveraging the resultant space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and conjunction assessment presents major challenges. This is in part because in characterizing space objects we reference a variety of identifiers, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, operational processes, operational statuses, and so forth, which tend to be defined in highly heterogeneous and sometimes inconsistent (...) ways. The Space Domain Ontologies are designed to provide a consensus-based realist framework for formulating such characterizations in a way that is both consistent and computable. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in a suite of ontologies built around the existing Space Object Ontology. They are stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space situational awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators and analysts. This paper provides an overview of the Space Domain Ontologies and their development and use. It presents the motivation for and advantages of the Space Domain Ontologies, including the benefits they provide for enhancing and maintaining long-term space situational awareness. (shrink)

: In this essay, I consider the question of whether women have an obligation to confront men who sexually harass them. A reluctance to be guilty of blaming the victims of harassment, coupled with other normative considerations that tell in favor of the unfairness of this sort of obligation, might make us think that women never have an obligation to confront their harassers. But I argue that women do have this obligation, and it is not overridden by many of the (...) considerations that can override other obligations to confront wrongdoers. (shrink)

In his early experimental work with Suppes, Davidson adopted rationality assumptions, not as necessary constraints on interpretation, but as practical conceits in addressing methodological problems faced by experimenters studying decision making under uncertainty. Although the content of their theory has since been undermined, their methodological approach—a Galilean form of methodological rationalism—lives on in contemporary psychological research. This article draws on Max Weber’s verstehen to articulate an account of Galilean methodological rationalism; explains how anomalies faced by Davidson’s early experimental work gave (...) rise to his later, canonical claims about rationality and interpretation; and reclaims this Galilean framework for use in contemporary psychological research. (shrink)

In the exploratory study reported here, we tested the efficacy of an intervention designed to train teenagers with Möbius syndrome (MS) to increase the use of alternative communication strategies (e.g., gestures) to compensate for their lack of facial expressivity. Specifically, we expected the intervention to increase the level of rapport experienced in social interactions by our participants. In addition, we aimed to identify the mechanisms responsible for any such increase in rapport. In the study, five teenagers with MS interacted with (...) three naïve participants without MS before the intervention, and with three different naïve participants without MS after the intervention. Rapport was assessed by self-report and by behavioral coders who rated videos of the interactions. Individual non-verbal behavior was assessed via behavioral coders, whereas verbal behavior was automatically extracted from the sound files. Alignment was assessed using cross recurrence quantification analysis and mixed-effects models. The results showed that observer-coded rapport was greater after the intervention, whereas self-reported rapport did not change significantly. Observer-coded gesture and expressivity increased in participants with and without MS, whereas overall linguistic alignment decreased. Fidgeting and repetitiveness of verbal behavior also decreased in both groups. In sum, the intervention may impact non-verbal and verbal behavior in participants with and without MS, increasing rapport as well as overall gesturing, while decreasing alignment. (shrink)

In his Encomium of Helen and On Not Being, Gorgias of Leontinoi discusses the nature and function of speech more extensively than any other surviving author before Plato. His discussions are not only surprising in the way they characterize the power of logos and its effects on a listener but also in how the two descriptions of speech seem to contradict one another. In the Helen, Gorgias claims that logos is a very powerful entity, capable of affecting a listener in (...) whatever way it wants. In On Not-Being, he makes the very different (but no less exaggerated) claim that logos is a non-entity, incapable of referring to anything other than itself. In this essay I show how these apparently contradictory accounts might be brought into harmony with one another.2 In the first part I address some of the interpretive difficulties with the text of Gorgias’s On Not Being (henceforth ONB) and the role that irony plays in the work. In particular I argue (as others have before) that Gorgias’s remarks about the impotency of speech are not meant to be taken seriously. Instead, they are aimed more squarely at raising questions about how exactly speech is thought to function and, more specifically, how linguistic reference works—i.e., how words somehow correspond to things, on one level, and to our ideas about things, on another. In the second and third parts of this paper, I illustrate how Gorgias’s concern with linguistic reference in ONB goes on to inform his notion of logos in the Encomium of Helen. I point specifically to evidence found in an important and often overlooked exit clause at the close of ONB regarding the difference between words and things. There, Gorgias insists that if words manifest meaning at all, they must appeal to their own sort of sense organ. In the Helen, he draws on the concepts of soul (psychē) and opinion (doxa) in order to construct this alternative, psychagogic account in which utterances are actually apprehended in ways akin to sense perception. Whether or not one is convinced by Gorgias’s alternative account of how speech works, the description he gives of logos does notionally circumvent the problem of linguistic reference and, in doing so, pushes one to think beyond the potentially constrictive framework of nomen et nominatum. I argue that, when read in this way, these two early discussions of logos represent a unified progression of serious thought about how speech works. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing (or re-establishing) consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-to-disagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion stoppers with discussion starters and replacing standstills with (...) contestation. We illustrate such replacements and develop this approach, we analyse technological conflicts in a concrete R&D setting: the global hydrogen economy. From this context, we focus on the conflict between the proponents of blue hydrogen (drawn from fossil fuels) and those of green hydrogen (created through electrolysis). We conclude by highlighting the advantage of the agonistic approach but also drawing attention to its own specific risk, namely, antagonism. (shrink)

As engineering applications require management of ever larger volumes of data, ontologies offer the potential to capture, manage, and augment data with the capability for automated reasoning and semantic querying. Unfortunately, considerable barriers hinder wider deployment of ontologies in engineering. Key among these is lack of a shared top-level ontology to unify and organise disparate aspects of the field and coordinate co-development of orthogonal ontologies. As a result, many engineering ontologies are limited to their scope, and functionally difficult to extend (...) or interoperate with other engineering ontologies. This paper demonstrates how the use of a top-level ontology, specifically the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), greatly facilitates interoperability of multiple engineering-related ontologies. We constructed a system of formal linked ontologies by re-engineering legacy ontologies to be conformant with BFO and developing new BFO-conformant ontologies to capture knowledge in the engineering design, enterprise, human factors, manufacturing, and application domain of additive manufacturing. The resulting Integrated Framework for Additively Manufactured Products (IFAMP), including the body knowledge instantiated on its basis, serve as the basis for a proposed Design with Additive Manufacturing Method (DWAM), which we believe can support the design of innovative products with semantically enhanced ideation tools and enhanced access to application domain knowledge. The method and its facilitation through the ontological framework are demonstrated using a case study in medicine. (shrink)

Есть исследователи, проблематика работ и теории которых остаются актуальными длительное время и после их смерти. К числу таких, несом- ненно, относится и Николай Дмитриевич Кондратьев – замечательный российский экономист, один из тех, чье имя довольно широко известно и за рубежом. И актуальность его идей тем более важно отметить в ознаме-нование 125-летнего юбилея Н. Д. Кондратьева, который мы отпраздновали в прошлом 2017 году. Именно этой теме – связи творчества Кондратьева и проблем современной экономики и экономической науки – и посвящены многие статьи (...) данного выпуска ежегодника. Биографии и отдельным аспектам творчества ученого отведены статьи первого раздела. Тем не менее нельзя не сказать хотя бы немного об этой личности и во Введении. (shrink)

The translational research community, in general, and the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) community, in particular, share the vision of repurposing EHRs for research that will improve the quality of clinical practice. Many members of these communities are also aware that electronic health records (EHRs) suffer limitations of data becoming poorly structured, biased, and unusable out of original context. This creates obstacles to the continuity of care, utility, quality improvement, and translational research. Analogous limitations to sharing objective data in (...) other areas of the natural sciences have been successfully overcome by developing and using common ontologies. This White Paper presents the authors’ rationale for the use of ontologies with computable semantics for the improvement of clinical data quality and EHR usability formulated for researchers with a stake in clinical and translational science and who are advocates for the use of information technology in medicine but at the same time are concerned by current major shortfalls. This White Paper outlines pitfalls, opportunities, and solutions and recommends increased investment in research and development of ontologies with computable semantics for a new generation of EHRs. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the possibility that failing to fulfill the Kantian obligation to protect one’s rational nature might actually vitiate future instances of this obligation. I respond to this dilemma by defending a novel interpretation of Kant’s views on the relation between the value we have and the respect we are owed. I argue, contra the received view among Kant scholars, that the feature in virtue of which someone has unconditional and incomparable value is not the same feature (...) in virtue of which she is owed the respect that constrains how she may be treated. So, even though someone who fails to attempt to protect her rational nature fails to respect herself in the right way, and even though this moral failing does make her lose a certain kind of value, her obligations to respect herself do not go away. (shrink)

Although ethics is an essential component of undergraduate medical education, research suggests current medical ethics curricula face considerable challenges in improving students’ ethical reasoning. This paper discusses these challenges and introduces a promising new mode of graduate and professional ethics instruction for overcoming them. We begin by describing common ethics curricula, focusing in particular on established problems with current approaches. Next, we describe a novel method of ethics education and assessment for medical students that we have devised, the Medical Ethics (...) Bowl. Finally, we suggest pedagogical advantages to MEBs when compared to other ethics curricula. (shrink)

Background: Community-based education (CBE) involves educating the head (cognitive), heart (affective), and the hand (practical) by utilizing tools that enable us to broaden and interrogate our value systems. This article reports on the use of virtue ethics (VE) theory for understanding the principles that create, maintain and sustain a socially accountable community placement programme for undergraduate medical students. Our research questions driving this secondary analysis were; what are the goods which are internal to the successful practice of CBE in medicine, (...) and what are the virtues that are likely to promote and sustain them? -/- Methods: We conducted a secondary theoretically informed thematic analysis of the primary data based on MacIntyre’s virtue ethics theory as the conceptual framework. -/- Results: Virtue ethics is an ethical approach that emphasizes the role of character and virtue in shaping moral behavior; when individuals engage in practices (such as CBE), goods internal to those practices (such as a collaborative attitude) strengthen the practices themselves, but also augment those individuals’ virtues, and that of their community (such as empathy). We identified several goods that are internal to the practice of CBE and accompanying virtues as important for the development, implementation and sustainability of a socially accountable community placement programme. A service-oriented mind-set, a deep understanding of community needs, a transformed mind, and a collaborative approach emerged as goods internal to the practice of a socially accountable CBE. The virtues needed to sustain the identified internal goods included empathy and compassion, connectedness, accountability, engagement [sustained relationship], cooperation, perseverance, and willingness to be an agent of change. -/- Conclusion: This study found that MacIntyre’s virtue ethics theory provided a useful theoretical lens for understanding the principles that create, maintain and sustain CBE practice. (shrink)

Quels impacts les techniques de procréation médicalement assistée ont-elles sur notre société? En quoi ces techniques nous obligent-elles à remettre en question, voire à repenser certains de nos principes?

Ce dossier traite du concept de responsabilité en tant qu‘il constitue l‘une des bases d‘une réflexion éclairée en ce qui concerne les enjeux éthiques engen- drés par les biotechnologies. Qu‘entend-on par le concept de responsabilité ? L‘être humain est-il responsable des artéfacts qu‘il crée ? Si oui, de quel type de responsabilité s‘agit-il ? N‘est-elle que d‘ordre juridique ? Ou également d‘ordre éthique ou morale ? Comment et qui détermine l‘acceptation ou le re- fus des possibilités que nous offrent les (...) biotechnologies ? Qui est respon- sable des innovations produites par les découvertes des scientifiques, et à l‘égard de qui ? (shrink)

Ce dossier traite de l‘influence et de l‘impact de l‘amélioration humaine sur notre société ainsi que sur notre conception de ce que c‘est que d‘être humain. Quels enjeux les technosciences engendrent-elles ? D‘où vient ce besoin de vouloir s‘améliorer ? Quelles libertés a-t-on face à ces nouvelles technologies? Et quelle place tient l‘humain dans ce débat ?

This study aimed to understand the preserved elements of self-identity in persons with moderate to severe dementia attributable to Alzheimer’s disease. A semi-structured interview was developed to explore the narrative self among residents with dementia in a residential care facility and residents without dementia in an independent living setting. The interviews were transcribed verbatim from audio recordings and analyzed for common themes, while being sensitive to possible differences between the groups. The participants with dementia showed evidence of self-reference even though (...) losses in explicit memory were evident. The most noticeable difference between the two groups was time frame reference. Nonetheless, all participants showed understanding of their role in relationships and exhibited concrete preferences. Our findings suggest that memory loss and other cognitive deficits associated with moderate to severe dementia do not necessarily lead to a loss of “self.”. (shrink)

Quel rôle la médecine a-t-elle à jouer dans l'accompagnement des personnes en fin de vie? Doit-elle poser certaines limites afin d'éviter un éventuel acharnement thérapeutique? Ou doit-elle laisser une liberté totale au patient concerné ainsi qu'à ses proches? Quels moyens propose-t-elle afin d'aborder la mort le plus sereinement possible?

An often-overlooked characteristic of the human mind is its propensity to wander. Despite growing interest in the science of mind-wandering, most studies operationalize mind-wandering by its task-unrelated contents. But these contents may be orthogonal to the processes that determine how thoughts unfold over time, remaining stable or wandering from one topic to another. In this chapter, we emphasize the importance of incorporating such processes into current definitions of mind-wandering, and propose that mind-wandering and other forms of spontaneous thought (such as (...) dreaming and creativity) are mental states that arise and transition relatively freely due to an absence of constraints on cognition. We review existing psychological, philosophical and neuroscientific research on spontaneous thought through the lens of this framework, and call for additional research into the dynamic properties of the mind and brain. (shrink)

In this open peer commentary, we categorize the possible “neuroscience in national security” definitions of misuse of science and identify which, if any, are uniquely presented by advances in neuroscience. To define misuse, we first define what we would consider appropriate use: the application of reasonably safe and effective technology, based on valid and reliable scientific research, to serve a legitimate end. This definition presents distinct opportunities for assessing misuse: misuse is the application of invalid or unreliable science, or is (...) the use of reliable scientific methods to serve illegitimate ends. Ultimately, we conclude that while national security is often a politicized issue, assessing the state of scientific progress should not be. (shrink)

This article identifies and compares meanings of wildfire risk mitigation for stakeholders in the Front Range of Colorado, USA. We examine the case of a collaborative partnership sponsored by government agencies and directed to decrease hazardous fuels in interface areas. Data were collected by way of key informant interviews and focus groups. The analysis is guided by the Circuit of Culture model in communication research. We found both shared and differing meanings between members of this partnership (the ‘‘producers’’) and other (...) stakeholders not formally in the partnership (the ‘‘consumers’’). We conclude that those promoting the partnership’s project to mitigate risk are primarily aligned with a discourse of scientific management. Stakeholders outside the partnership follow a discourse of community. We argue that failure to recognize and account for differences in the way risk mitigation is framed and related power dynamics could hamper the communicational efforts of the collaborative partnership and impact goals for fuels reduction. We recommend ways that both groups can capitalize on shared meanings and how agency managers and decision makers can build better working relationships with interface communities and other external stakeholders. (shrink)

This is part 1 of 6 of the dossier What Do We Talk about when We Talk about Queer Death?, edited by M. Petricola. The contributions collected in this article sit at the crossroads between thanatology and queer theory and tackle questions such as: how can we define queer death studies as a research field? How can queer death studies problematize and rethink the life-death binary? Which notions and hermeneutic tools could be borrowed from other disciplines in order to better (...) define queer death studies? The present article includes the following contributions: – MacCormack P., What does queer death studies mean?; – Radomska M., On queering death studies; – Lykke N., Death as vibrancy; – Hillerup Hansen I., What concreteness will do to resolve the uncertain; – Olson P., Queer objectivity as a response to denials of death; – Manganas N., The queer lack of a chthonic instinct. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccination of children has begun in various high-income countries with regulatory approval and general public support, but largely without careful ethical consideration. This trend is expected to extend to other COVID-19 vaccines and lower ages as clinical trials progress. This paper provides an ethical analysis of COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children. Specifically, we argue that it is currently unclear whether routine COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children is ethically justified in most contexts, given the minimal direct benefit that COVID-19 vaccination (...) provides to children, the potential for rare risks to outweigh these benefits and undermine vaccine confidence, and substantial evidence that COVID-19 vaccination confers adequate protection to risk groups, such as older adults, without the need to vaccinate healthy children. We conclude that child COVID-19 vaccination in wealthy communities before adults in poor communities worldwide is ethically unacceptable and consider how policy deliberations might evolve in light of future developments. (shrink)

A longish (12 page) discussion of Richard Sorabji's excellent book, with a further discussion of what it means for a theory of emotions to be a cognitive theory.