In recent years, the genetic testing and selection of IVF embryos, known as preimplantation genetic testing (PGT), has gained much traction in clinical assisted reproduction for preventing transmission of genetic defects. However, a more recent ethically and morally controversial development in PGT is its possible use in selecting IVF embryos for optimal intelligence quotient (IQ) and other non–disease-related socially desirable traits, such as tallness, fair complexion, athletic ability, and eye and hair colour, based on polygenic risk scores (PRS), in what (...) is referred to as PGT-P. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning–based analysis of big data sets collated from genome sequencing of specific human ethnic populations can be used to estimate an individual embryo’s likelihood of developing such multifactorial traits by analysing the combination of specific genetic variants within its genome. Superficially, this technique appears compliant with Islamic principles and ethics. Because there is no modification of the human genome, there is no tampering with Allah’s creation (taghyīr khalq Allah). Nevertheless, a more critical analysis based on the five maxims of Islamic jurisprudence (qawa'id fiqhiyyah) that are often utilized in discourses on Islamic bioethics, namely qaṣd (intention), yaqın̄ (certainty), ḍarar (injury), ḍarūra (necessity), and `urf (custom), would instead reveal some major ethical and moral flaws of this new medical technology in the selection of non–disease-related socially desirable traits, and its non-compliance with the spirit and essence of Islamic law (shariah). Muslim scholars, jurists, doctors, and biomedical scientists should debate this further and issue a fatwa on this new medical technology platform. (shrink)

Integrating large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 into medical ethics is a novel concept, and understanding the effectiveness of these models in aiding ethicists with decision-making can have significant implications for the healthcare sector. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of GPT-4 in responding to complex medical ethical vignettes and to gauge its utility and limitations for aiding medical ethicists. Using a mixed-methods, cross-sectional survey approach, a panel of six ethicists assessed LLM-generated responses to eight (...) ethical vignettes.The main outcomes measured were relevance, reasoning, depth, technical and non-technical clarity, as well as acceptability of GPT-4’s responses. The readability of the responses was also assessed. Of the six metrics evaluating the effectiveness of GPT-4’s responses, the overall mean score was 4.1/5. GPT-4 was rated highest in providing technical (4.7/5) and non-technical clarity (4.4/5), whereas the lowest rated metrics were depth (3.8/5) and acceptability (3.8/5). There was poor-to-moderate inter-rater reliability characterised by an intraclass coefficient of 0.54 (95% CI: 0.30 to 0.71). Based on panellist feedback, GPT-4 was able to identify and articulate key ethical issues but struggled to appreciate the nuanced aspects of ethical dilemmas and misapplied certain moral principles.This study reveals limitations in the ability of GPT-4 to appreciate the depth and nuanced acceptability of real-world ethical dilemmas, particularly those that require a thorough understanding of relational complexities and context-specific values. Ongoing evaluation of LLM capabilities within medical ethics remains paramount, and further refinement is needed before it can be used effectively in clinical settings. (shrink)

Distributive justice is known to have important emotional and affective outcomes. The present study explores the role of distributive justice as an antecedent to feelings of gratitude toward the organization. Borrowing from social exchange theory, we investigate the mediating role of gratitude in the relationship between “perceived fairness in distributive justice” and “employees’ organization citizenship behaviors.” Time-lagged, multi-source data was collected from 185 employees and their supervisors employed in a large manufacturing organization based in East India. Two significant findings emerge. (...) First, the results indicate that feelings of gratitude signal fair distribution of benefits such that the employees go beyond the call of the duty to invest in OCB. Second, engagement in such acts seems to nullify their social debts highlighted in the social exchange perspective. Thus, a strong moral emotion, gratitude is a powerful vehicle that drives employees to act in the organization’s interests because doing is desirable and rightful. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

It is known that, on average, people adapt their choice of memory strategy to the subjective utility of interaction. What is not known is whether an individual's choices are boundedly optimal. Two experiments are reported that test the hypothesis that an individual's decisions about the distribution of remembering between internal and external resources are boundedly optimal where optimality is defined relative to experience, cognitive constraints, and reward. The theory makes predictions that are tested against data, not fitted to it. The (...) experiments use a no-choice/choice utility learning paradigm where the no-choice phase is used to elicit a profile of each participant's performance across the strategy space and the choice phase is used to test predicted choices within this space. They show that the majority of individuals select strategies that are boundedly optimal. Further, individual differences in what people choose to do are successfully predicted by the analysis. Two issues are discussed: the performance of the minority of participants who did not find boundedly optimal adaptations, and the possibility that individuals anticipate what, with practice, will become a bounded optimal strategy, rather than what is boundedly optimal during training. (shrink)

Efforts to build research capacity and capability in low and middle income countries (LMIC) has progressed over the last three decades, yet it confronts many challenges including issues with communicating or even negotiating across different cultures. Implementing global research requires a broader understanding of community engagement and participatory research approaches. There is a considerable amount of guidance available on community engagement in clinical trials, especially for studies for HIV/aids, even culturally specific codes for recruiting vulnerable populations such as the San (...) or Maori people. However, the same cannot be said for implementing research in global health. In an effort to build on this work, the Pakistan Institute of Living and Learning and University College London in the UK sought to better understand differences in beliefs, values and norms of local communities in Pakistan. In particular, they have sought to help researchers from high income countries (HIC) understand how their values are perceived and understood by the local indigenous researchers in Pakistan. To achieve this end, a group discussion was organised with indigenous researchers at Pakistan Institute of Living and Learning. The discussion will ultimately help inform the development of a cultural protocol for researchers from HIC engaging with communities in LMIC. This discussion revealed five common themes; (1) religious principles and rules, (2) differing concepts of and moral emphasis on autonomy and privacy, (3) importance of respect and trust; (4) cultural differences (etiquette); (5) custom and tradition (gift giving and hospitality). Based on the above themes, we present a preliminary cultural analysis to raise awareness and to prepare researchers from HIC conducting cross cultural research in Pakistan. This is likely to be particularly relevant in collectivistic cultures where social interconnectedness, family and community is valued above individual autonomy and the self is not considered central to moral thinking. In certain cultures, HIC ideas of individual autonomy, the notion of informed consent may be regarded as a collective family decision. In addition, there may still be acceptance of traditional professional roles such as ‘doctor knows best’, while respect and privacy may have very different meanings. (shrink)

Background Informed consent is considered to be the standard method for respecting the autonomy of individual participants in research and practices and is thought to be based on several conditions: (1) providing information on the purpose of the research or a specific treatment, what it will entail, (2) the participants being mentally competent to understand the information and weigh it in the balance, and (3) the participants to be free from coercion. While there are studies of informed consent in other (...) countries, especially Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), this study explored the experiences of clinicians regarding the process of obtaining informed consent to participate in a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) in particular and treatment in general in healthcare settings, both general and mental health, specifically focusing on the tension between individualistic concept of autonomy and collectivist values in cultures such as Pakistan. Methods Qualitative interviews with 20 clinicians from healthcare settings in Pakistan who also served as recruiters in a suicide prevention RCT in Pakistan. The interviews were guided by semi-structured topic guide. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Results The interviews revealed that shared decision making was more morally important than individual autonomy, the role of the family played a dominant part in the consent-taking procedure, the decision of the elder and/or family patriarch took prominence, and that clinician-researchers encountered significant challenges in consent process in Pakistan, while recruiting patients into the trial as well as during routine treatment processes in healthcare settings. Four distinct themes emerged which were (1) Family deciding for patients, (2) Benefits of involving family in consent process, (3) Gender disparity in consent process, (4) Challenges experienced by clinician-researchers during consent process in Pakistan. Conclusions The concept of consent is generally considered important in many cultures, however, there are two strands of understanding. There seems to be consensus that participant agreement is necessary to protect the participant but with regards to autonomy there are significant cultural differences whether it is the right for autonomy of the individual (individualistic concept) or family, community, or expert authority in other cultures. In Pakistan clinician-researchers sometimes preferred one approach and sometimes the other as they appreciated the interests of the patient to be. (shrink)

Publication date: 30 March 2017 Source: Author: Poonam Bala, Tanivir Kaur, Maninder Kaur This is an experimental study conducted on the upper primary school students in the district of S.B.S Nagar, Punjab. The study was conducted on the students of 6th and 7th class of an international School. Total of 100 students were enrolled for this experimental study who met the inclusion criteria and were randomly divided into 2 equal groups by simple randomization technique. They received either the lecture (...) method teaching or the smart class method teaching. For conducting the experiment, the investigator used pre-test and post-test comparison group design. For collection of data, a structured questionnaire and a structured teaching programme was used. t-test was used for analysis and interpretation of the data. The results of the study revealed that the lecture method of teaching was more effective as compared to a smart class method of teaching. (shrink)

Evidence suggests a limited contribution to the total research output in leading obstetrics and gynaecology journals by researchers from the developing world. Editorial bias, quality of scientific research produced and language barriers have been attributed as possible causes for this phenomenon. The aim of this study was to understand the prevalence of editorial board members based out of low and lower-middle income countries in leading journals in the field of obstetrics and gynaecology. The top 21 journals in the field of (...) obstetrics and gynaecology were selected based on their impact factor, SCImago ranking and literature search. The composition of the editorial boards of these journals was studied based on World Bank Income Criteria to understand the representation status of researchers from low and lower-middle income countries. A total of 1315 board members make up the editorial composition of leading obstetrics and gynaecology journals. The majority of these editors belong to high-income countries (n = 1148; 87.3%). Low (n = 6; 0.45%) and lower-middle income (n = 55; 4.18%) countries make up for a very minuscule proportion of editorial board members. Only a meagre 9 out of 21 journals have editorial board members from these countries (42.85%). Low and low-middle countries have poor representation in the editorial boards of leading obstetrics and gynaecology journals. Poor representation in research from these countries has grave consequences for a large proportion of the global population and multidisciplinary collaborative efforts must be taken to rapidly change this statistic with immediate effect. (shrink)

We describe the ethical leadership dilemmas confronting Verdant Power. Formed in 2000, this New York City marine renewable energy company develops projects and technology that delivers electricity directly into the local power grid. Set in early 2010, the case outlines the tensions, challenges and costs (both financial and time) that management faces as it attempts to commercialize a technology in an industry with strict and rigid regulatory policies. The key teaching objectives of the case include a) understanding the leadership role (...) that the company must assume in paving the way for regulatory reform for US-based marine renewable technology ventures, and b) appreciating the importance and implications of sustainability given the pursuit of the financial and environmental mission of the founders. (shrink)

Recent literature reported that judgments of semantic coherence are influenced by a positive affective response due to increased fluency of processing. The presented paper investigates whether fluency of processing can be modified by affective responses to the coherent stimuli as well as an automaticity of processes involved in semantic coherence judgments. The studies employed the dyads of triads task in which participants are shown two word triads and asked to solve a semantically coherent one or indicate which of the two (...) is semantically coherent. Across two studies in a dualtask paradigm we show that a) attentional resources moderate insight into semantically coherent word triads, whereas b) judgments of semantic coherence judgments are independent of attentional resources. We discuss implications of our findings for how people might form intuitive judgments of semantic coherence. (shrink)

David Milner and Melvyn Goodale’s dissociation hypothesis is commonly taken to state that there are two functionally specialized cortical streams of visual processing originating in striate (V1) cortex: a dorsal, action-related “unconscious” stream and a ventral, perception-related “conscious” stream. As Milner and Goodale acknowledge, findings from blindsight studies suggest a more sophisticated picture that replaces the distinction between unconscious vision for action and conscious vision for perception with a tripartite division between unconscious vision for action, conscious vision for perception, and (...) unconscious vision for perception. The combination excluded by the tripartite division is the possibility of conscious vision for action. But are there good grounds for concluding that there is no conscious vision for action? There is now overwhelming evidence that illusions and perceived size can have a significant effect on action (Bruno & Franz, 2009; Dassonville & Bala, 2004; Franz & Gegenfurtner, 2008; McIntosh & Lashley, 2008). There is also suggestive evidence that any sophisticated visual behavior requires collaboration between the two visual streams at every stage of the process (Schenk & McIntosh, 2010). I nonetheless want to make a case for the tripartite division between unconscious vision for action, conscious vision for perception, and unconscious vision for perception. My aim here is not to refute the evidence showing that conscious vision can affect action but rather to argue (a) that we cannot gain cognitive access to action-guiding dorsal stream representations, and (b) that these representations do not correlate with phenomenal consciousness. This vindicates the semi-conservative view that the dissociation hypothesis is best understood as a tripartite division. (shrink)

During the early Islamic period Cyprus was a frontier territory unlike most—control, influence, and tax revenue over the island were shared mutually by both the Byzantine and Islamic states—and the historiographical record demonstrates that its legal and administrative status was fraught with challenges. The present study is based on the surviving Arabic material in Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām’s Kitāb al-Amwāl, subsequently transmitted in Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān of al-Balādhurī. It argues that the problematic nature of Cyprus in this period, coupled (...) with Abū ʿUbayd’s unprecedented access to genuine correspondence of jurists from the end of the eighth century, led the author to enshrine important documentary evidence that did not survive elsewhere. Furthermore, it suggests that the continued source-critical and comparative analysis of early Arabic narrative source material can still yield fruitful information for an understanding of the earliest centuries of Islamic history despite the sources’ many limitations. (shrink)

Both Martin Heidegger and Harry Frankfurt have argued that the fundamental feature of human identity is care. Both contend that caring is bound up with the fact that we are finite beings related to our own impending death, and both argue that caring has a distinctive, circular and non-instantaneous, temporal structure. In this paper, I explore the way Heidegger and Frankfurt each understand the relations among care, death, and time, and I argue for the superiority of Heideggerian version of this (...) nest of claims. Frankfurt claims that we should conceive of the most basic commitments which practically orient a person in the world and define his identity (“volitional necessities”) as naturalistic facts, foundational for and located completely without the normative space of reasons. In support of this he appeals to the supposedly foundational role played in human life by the instinct for self-preservation, what Frankfurt calls the “love of living.” The claim is that in questions of practical identity there is a definite priority of the factual over the normative. Frankfurt’s naturalistic model of volitional necessity is motivated by a misunderstanding of the temporal structure of care, a misunderstanding that helps lead him to an implausible conception of the basic structures of human identity. Heidegger advances an anti-naturalistic conception of caring, one bound up with his way of understanding how human beings relate to their own future. I argue that the existential, temporal, and normative significance that Frankfurt attributes to the naturalized “love of living” is better captured by the Heideggerian claim that human identity is defined by being “for-the-sake-of” certain projects and commitments, a way of being lived out in the way Heidegger calls “being-towards-death.”. (shrink)

What happens to the inner light of consciousness with the death of the individual body and brain? Reductive materialism assumes it simply fades to black. Others think of consciousness as indicating a continuation of self, a transformation, an awakening or even alternatives based on the quality of life experience. In this issue, speculation drawn from theoretic research are presented. -/- Table of Contents Epigraph: From “The Immortal”, Jorge Luis Borges iii Editor’s Introduction: I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day, Gregory (...) M. Nixon iv-xi Research Essays The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument Teed Rockwell 862-881 Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology, Steve Bindeman 882-899 The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death, Bernardo Kastrup 900-909 Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon—A Hypothesis, Eva Déli 910-930 The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death, Bryon K. Ehlmann 931-950 Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathway, Contzen Pereira & J Shashi Kiran Reddy 951-968 On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death, Massimo Pregnolato & Alfredo Pereira Jr. 969-991 Science and Postmortem Survival, Edward F. Kelly 992-1011 Explorations ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics, Chris H. Hardy 1012-1035 Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? Radivoj Stankovich (with Micho Durdevich) 1036-1050 Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death, Ken Bausch 1051-1063 Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm, Ronald Peter Glasberg 1064-1077 Living With Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness, Donald Brackett 1078-1098 Mysticism, Consciousness, Death, Mike Sosteric 1099-1118 What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James, Jonathan Bricklin 1119-1140 Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? Roger Cook 1141-1153 It’s the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World, James P. Kowall & Pradeep B. Deshpande 1154-1208 Statements A Feminine Vision for the World Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology, Lorna Green 1209-1217 The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife, Iona Miller 1218-1228 Are We Really “such stuff as dreams are made on”? Chris Nunn 1229-1225 Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not), Deepak Chopra 1226-1230 Life After Death? An Improbable Essay, Stuart Kauffman 1231-1236. (shrink)

A moving cultural biography of abolitionist martyr John Brown, by one of the most important African-American intellectuals of the twentieth century. In the history of slavery and its legacy, John Brown looms large as a hero whose deeds partly precipitated the Civil War. As Frederick Douglass wrote: "When John Brown stretched forth his arm... the clash of arms was at hand." DuBois's biography brings Brown stirringly to life and is a neglected classic.

This article examines the impact that the interplay between workplace, the welfare state and global working life has on female workers when they become pregnant. By focusing on two highly educated Norwegian female workers, it explores how this change process takes place in two companies operating in the global market located in different countries: Norway and the US. Pregnancy contributes to transforming the neutralized bodiless female worker into an embodied worker with gender. The female workers' experiences and negotiations represent forms (...) of global action on local stages. This is illustrated by four processes: `married to work', `pregnant and still married to work', `negotiating separation from work' and `excluding mothering'. The findings indicate the significance of taking welfare state and workplace policy approaches into consideration in studies of global effects on employees. (shrink)

This paper argues that self-consciousness and associated psychic consciousness emerges as a consequence of a recursive selfdirecting on itself of the cognitive centre in the human brain. The neural mechanisms and circuits underlying self-consciousness appeared and developed during biological evolution as an adaptation that increased the fitness of our social ancestors, chances of their survival, and reproduction. These mechanisms/circuits strengthened the efficiency of individuals in various social relations, enabled separation of 'I' from 'he/she' or 'them' and the formation of firstand (...) higher-order theory of mind, stimulated development of complex, recursive language, facilitated forming temporary coalitions directed to achieve a particular goal, helped to establish social hierarchies, and increased coherence and cooperativity of a social group. The reciprocal reinforcement of the development of the neural network in the brain underlying self-consciousness and of the network of various social relations and aspects was a self-driving process, one of positive feedbacks abundant in anthropogenesis. (shrink)

Let ${\mathbb{B}}$ and ${\mathbb{C}}$ be Boolean algebras and ${e: \mathbb{B}\rightarrow \mathbb{C}}$ an embedding. We examine the hierarchy of ideals on ${\mathbb{C}}$ for which ${ \bar{e}: \mathbb{B}\rightarrow \mathbb{C} / \fancyscript{I}}$ is a regular (i.e. complete) embedding. As an application we deal with the interrelationship between ${\fancyscript{P}(\omega)/{{\rm fin}}}$ in the ground model and in its extension. If M is an extension of V containing a new subset of ω, then in M there is an almost disjoint refinement of the family ([ω]ω) V (...) . Moreover, there is, in M, exactly one ideal ${\fancyscript{I}}$ on ω such that ${(\fancyscript{P}(\omega)/{{\rm fin}})^V}$ is a dense subalgebra of ${(\fancyscript{P}(\omega)/\fancyscript{I})^M}$ if and only if M does not contain an independent (splitting) real. We show that for a generic extension V[G], the canonical embedding $$\fancyscript{P}^V(\omega){/}{\rm fin}\hookrightarrow \fancyscript{P}(\omega){/}(U(Os)(\mathbb{B}))^G$$ is a regular one, where ${U(Os)(\mathbb{B})}$ is the Urysohn closure of the zero-convergence structure on ${\mathbb{B}}$. (shrink)

At Book 15, chapter 76, Diodorus Siculus says that during the Attic year 366/5, at the same time as the Thebans won possession of the Attic border district of Oropus, the King of Persia sent ambassadors and persuaded the Greeks to put an end to their wars and to conclude Common Peace )); this peace, he adds, was more than five years after the battle of Leuctra.

This book provides an introduction to postphenomenology, an emerging school of thought in the philosophy of technology and science and technology studies, which addresses the relationships users develop with the devices they use.

Open peer commentary on the article “Sensorimotor Direct Realism: How We Enact Our World” by Michael Beaton. Upshot: This commentary is broadly sympathetic to the claims made in the target article. I start by questioning whether we can have direct access to an external reality in such a way that our experience is not intrinsically private. I then suggest that the argument for direct realism presented here is inconclusive with regard to whether external objects play a causal or a constitutive (...) role. (shrink)

Instead, this book employs a philosophy oriented towards the relationship between self and other. The book gives a critical discussion of religion, the Enlightenment and Romanticism.

The name of Arsen Rychinsky - a doctor, church and public figure, a prominent religious ethnologist - is being forgotten today. Arsen Rychinsky was born in the village of Tetilitsa, Kremenetsky district of the former Volyn province in a priest's family, studied at the Kremenetsky Pymnasium, and after graduating from Zhytomyr Theological Seminary. While studying at the seminary, Arsen Richinsky produced manuscripts and journals. A well-endowed young man searched hard for himself. Perhaps that is why in 1911 he became not (...) a priest but a teacher of the parish school of the village of Sidnyarka, Lutsk county. He taught Richinsky not for long, but his love for school, he kept his children for life. From September 1911 Rychinsky studied at the University of Warsaw, and from the beginning of World War I transferred to the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev. In March 1917 he successfully passed the exams and was approved "to the degree of a doctor with all the rights and advantages of the laws of this degree assigned.". (shrink)