ABSTRACTThe financial crisis of 2008 was unforeseen partly because the academic theories that underpin policy making do not sufficiently account for uncertainty and complexity or learned and evolved human capabilities for managing them. Mainstream theories of decision making tend to be strongly normative and based on wishfully unrealistic “idealized” modeling. In order to develop theories of actual decision making under uncertainty, we need new methodologies that account for how human actors often manage uncertain situations “well enough.” Some possibly helpful methodologies, (...) drawing on digital science, focus on the role of emotions in determining people's choices; others examine how people construct narratives that enable them to act; still others combine qualitative with quantitative data. (shrink)

This issue of the journal includes papers across both analytical and empirical schools within bioethics.In his feature article, ‘The kindest cut? Surgical castration, sex offenders and coercive offers’, John McMillan asks whether surgical castration can be ethically provided as medical treatment for sex offenders . While surgical castration has previously been available in a number of European countries, in recent years it has only been available in the Czech Republic and in Germany. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (...) has attacked the Czech and German governments for engaging in degrading treatments. McMillan focuses on the nature of the relationship between psychiatrist and the detainee. Is the option of surgical castration a non-coercive ‘offer’, or is the option of non-castration a coercive threat? For McMillan, the nature of the intent is important, but he argues that the Czech and German approaches to surgical castration are not necessarily coercive, and can be a component of ethically praiseworthy self-transformation.Responding to McMillan, Alan Wertheimer and Franklin Miller focus on the question of coercion . They argue that the offer of castration is only coercive if psychiatrists or the state threaten to violate sex-offenders’ rights, or forego an obligation to the prisoner if he declines castration. On their view, such offers are not coercive, though they note that this does not settle the key ethical questions.Jesper Ryberg and Thomas Petersen, by contrast, argue both that offers can be coercive and that coercive offers could be morally legitimate - where there is a significant societal benefit . They suggest …. (shrink)

Introduction -- Facing up to paternalism in research ethics -- Preface to a theory of consent transactions in research : beyond valid consent -- Should we worry about money? -- Exploitation in clinical research -- The interaction principle.

[ Alan W. Richardson] This essay explores the uses that Michael Friedman and Bas van Fraassen have recently made of the work of Hans Reichenbach. It uses Friedman's work to complicate van Fraassen's invocation of Reichenbach's voluntarism in support of empiricism. It uses van Fraassen's work to motivate a concern with Friedman's neo-Kantian reading of Reichenbach. We are, finally, left with questions about the status and content of the account of the epistemic subject available to an epistemological voluntarist. /// (...) [Thomas E. Uebel] This response considers the question whether empiricists are condemned to silence about the epistemic agency their theories attribute or presuppose. It is argued that, unlike Reichenbach or Carnap, Neurath allowed for and indeed provided specifications of the role of epistemic agency in scientific inquiry. If this is correct, it underscores once more the need to distinguish between the various strands of logical positivism which show different strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that stressful conditions can facilitate evolutionary change. The mechanisms elucidated thus far accomplish this with a generic increase in heritable variation that facilitates more rapid adaptive evolution, often via plastic modifications of existing characters. Through scrutiny of different meanings of stress in biological research, and an explicit recognition that stressors must be characterized relative to their effect on capacities for maintaining functional integrity, we distinguish between: (1) previously identified stress-responsive mechanisms that facilitate evolution by maintaining an (...) adaptive fit with the environment, and (2) the co-option of stress-responsive mechanisms that are specific to stressors leading to the origin of novelties via compensation. Unlike standard accounts of gene co-option that identify component sources of evolutionary change, our model documents the cost-benefit trade-offs and thereby explains how one mechanism—an immediate response to acute stress—is transformed evolutionarily into another—routine protection from recurring stressors. We illustrate our argument with examples from cell type origination as well as processes and structures at higher levels of organization. These examples suggest a general principle of evolutionary origination based on the capacity to switch between regulatory states related to reproduction and proliferation versus survival and differentiation. (shrink)

Donald Wiseman, a leading assyriologist, had a distinguished service in the RAF during the Second World War under Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park and later in the Mediterranean as Chief Intelligence Officer. After time working at the British Museum on thousands of cuneiform tablets and as a member of Mallowan's team excavating Nimrud, he took up the Chair of Assyriology at SOAS in 1961. Wiseman, who was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1969, worked to advance archaeological work in the (...) Near East. (shrink)

This paper looks at some of the ways in which environmental philosophers have sought to press ecological concepts into the service of environmental ethics. It seeks to show that although ecology plays a major role in opening our eyes to sources of value in the natural world, we should not necessarily attempt to build our account of nature’s value upon the concepts which ecology supplies. No description is going to capture nature’s essence; no formula is going to demonstrate its value. (...) We should recognise the natural world as a particular historic individual and relate to it accordingly. This means acknowledging its value in a contingent, conditional and provisional way, and recognizing its value as a precondition of the value of our own lives. (shrink)

John Norton’s argument that all formal theories of induction fail raises substantive questions about the philosophical analysis of scientific reasoning. What are the criteria of adequacy for philosophical theories of induction, explanation, or theory structure? Is more than one adequate theory possible? Using a generalized version of Norton’s argument, I demonstrate that the competition between formal and material theories in philosophy of science results from adhering to different criteria of adequacy. This situation encourages an interpretation of “formal” and “material” as (...) indicators of divergent criteria that accompany different philosophical methodologies. I characterize another criterion of adequacy associated with material theories, the avoidance of imported problems, and conclude that one way to negotiate between conflicting criteria is to adopt a pluralist stance toward philosophical theories of scientific reasoning. (shrink)

Die aramäischen Texte aus Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad/Dūr-Katlimmu/Magdalu. By Wolfgang Röllig. Berichte der Ausgrabung Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad/Dūr-Katlimmu, vol. 17. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014. Pp. lxiv + 284, illus. €84.