Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a serious condition with a large disease burden. It is often claimed that MDD is a “brain disease.” What would it mean for MDD to be a brain disease? I argue that the best interpretation of this claim is as offering a substantive empirical hypothesis about the causes of the syndrome of depression. This syndrome-causal conception of disease, combined with the idea that MDD is a disease of the brain, commits the brain disease conception of (...) MDD to the claim that brain dysfunction causes the symptoms of MDD. I argue that this consequence of the brain disease conception of MDD is false. It incorrectly rules out genuine instances of content-sensitive causation between adverse conditions in the world and the characteristic symptoms of MDD. Empirical evidence shows that the major causes of depression are genuinely psychological causes of the symptoms of MDD. This rules out, in many cases, the “brute” causation required by the brain disease conception. The existence of cases of MDD with non-brute causes supports the reinstatement of the old nosological distinction between endogenous and exogenous depression. (shrink)

The following article consists of an introduction by the first author, an annotated translation by the second, and then an analysis by the first, of the earliest known Scandinavian response to the Vampire phenomenon of Medvedia in 1732 by Nicolaus Boye, a state-employed physician residing in Stockholm. The translation shows that Boye’s own article, which constitutes a complete refutation of Johann Flückinger’s claims, was meticulously organised, abstracting and arguing against the major themes which he observed in the Visum et Repertum, (...) while the analysis shows that Boye was working under the topical medical theories of the Dutch botanist and physician Herman Boerhaave. The analysis also demonstrates the extent to which Boye’s rationalism in refuting the Visum at Repertum is informed by his Lutheranism and belief in the Day of Judgement, and concludes by showing examples of the impact his work exerted on other academics in the 1730s. (shrink)

Driven by intergroup competition, social norms, beliefs, and practices can evolve in ways that more effectively tap into a wide variety of evolved psychological mechanisms to foster group-beneficial behavior. The more powerful such evolved mechanisms are, the more effectively culture can potentially harness and manipulate them to generate greater phenotypic variation across groups, thereby fueling cultural group selection.

Background In Canadian jurisdictions without specific legislation pertaining to research consent, the onus is placed on researchers to determine whether a child is capable of independently consenting to participate in a research study. Little, however, is known about how child health researchers are approaching consent and capacity assessment in practice. The aim of this study was to explore and describe researchers' current practices. Methods The study used a qualitative descriptive design consisting of 14 face-to-face interviews with child health researchers and (...) research assistants in Southern Ontario. Transcribed interviews were analysed for common themes. Results Procedures for assessing capacity varied considerably from the use of age cutoffs to in-depth engagement with each child. Three key issues emerged from the accounts: (1) requirements that consent be provided by a single person thwarted researchers' abilities to support family decision-making; (2) little practical distinction was made between assessing if a child was capable, versus determining if study information had been adequately explained by the researcher; and (3) participants' perceived that review boards' requirements may conflict with what they considered ethical consent practices. Conclusion The results suggest that researchers' consent and capacity knowledge and skills vary considerably. Perceived discrepancies between ethical practice and ethics boards' requirements suggest the need for dialogue, education and possibly ethics board reforms. Furthermore we propose, where appropriate, a ‘family decision-making’ model that allows parents and their children to consent together, thereby shifting the focus from separate assent and consent procedures to approaches that appropriately engage the child and family. (shrink)

Neutrality is held to be the touchstone of good mediation. True neutrality is elusive, however, and probably not even desirable, at least when applied to patient‐provider disputes over medical care. In this context, mediators should not posture as “neutrals”; they should strive instead to protect their clients’ autonomy.

The case method approach to introducing ethical issues is a traditional tool for applying critical thinking skills to a specific dilemma (Beauchamp & Childress, 2001). It allows for personal reflection and clarification of an individual's conceptual framework for deciding what is and is not ethical behavior. However, it also affords the student distance from the story line and may, through providing a retrospective critique, prevent sufficient challenge to the student to articulate and defend personal value assessments in addressing the ethical (...) dynamics reflected in the case. Providing teaching exercises that encourage the creation of language to form that conceptual framework and a comfort in using that language allows the student to not only identify ethical issues but also recognize and more effectively communicate the struggles with molding a personal values portrait to apply to such cases. (shrink)

Many commentators have dismissed Wittgenstein’s numbering system in the Tractatus as either incoherent or a joke. In this paper I offer a way to rehabilitate the system along the lines of Wittgenstein’s own instructions. Reading the Tractatus in this way not only offers a way to make sense of the numbering, but also offers a significant improvement in examining the meaning of the text.

This article focuses on contemporary work on public knowledge of, information about, and public images and judgments of law and courts. It begins with a brief digression on the nature of the scholarship on public opinion and the operation of courts and postulates that courts are political institutions. In order to highlight the importance of judicial knowledge, democratic theory is explained in the article. The theory of judicial influence is a theory of individual-level attitude change. A great deal more research, (...) however, must be conducted before the hypothesis of attitude change can be accepted. Legitimacy is one of the most highly valued forms of political capital. Available evidence indicates that national high courts differ greatly in the legitimacy they have acquired. Future research should focus on the processes through which courts become salient to ordinary people and how interactions with courts, especially judicial symbols, contribute to institutional legitimacy. (shrink)

Some corporations use their disproportionate lobbying power to obstruct policy. This obstructive lobbying violates most people’s claims to equal political influence. Occasionally, however, other corporations respond by using their disproportionate power to lobby in support of policy. Does this supportive lobbying violate claims to equal influence too? This paper argues that it does, using climate policy as an example. Supportive lobbying does not, in many cases, work to cancel out the influence from obstructive corporate lobbying. Moreover, supportive lobbying violates claims (...) to equal influence even in cases where this lobbying helps equalise the distribution of influence, helps equalise the likelihood of congruence between policy and people’s policy preferences, and helps enforce claims to equal influence held by people in the supportive corporation. (shrink)

In their article, De Bie et al. (2023) provide a scoping review of the ethical and socio-legal issues arising from research into, and the potential, maybe even likely deployment of, artificial womb...

Historically, entities with a vested interest in a product that critics have suggested is harmful have consistently used research to back their claims that the product is safe. Prominent examples are: tobacco, lead, bisphenol A, and atrazine. Research literature indicates that about 80–90% of studies with industry affiliation found no harm from the product, while only about 10–20% of studies without industry affiliation found no harm. In parallel to other historical debates, recent studies examining a possible relationship between mercury exposure (...) and autism spectrum disorder show a similar dichotomy. Studies sponsored and supported by industry or entities with an apparent conflict of interest have most often shown no evidence of harm or no “consistent” evidence of harm, while studies without such affiliations report positive evidence of a Hg/autism association. The potentially causal relationship between Hg exposure and ASD differs from other toxic products since there is a broad coalition of entities for whom a conflict of interest arises. These include influential governmental public health entities, the pharmaceutical industry, and even the coal burning industry. This review includes a systematic literature search of original studies on the potential relationship between Hg and ASD from 1999 to August 2015, finding that of the studies with public health and/or industry affiliation, 86% reported no relationship between Hg and ASD. However, among studies without public health and/or industry affiliation, only 21% find no relationship between Hg and ASD. The discrepancy in these results suggests a bias indicative of a conflict of interest. (shrink)

Despite the apparent aptness of the spatial model for Internet concepts, I will try to show that the paradigm is in fact very misleading and unnatural First, I argue that Cyberspace lacks the central features that constitute a space. Then I show that the metaphor creates a poor conceptual model that yields false or misleading conclusions about how Cyberspace functions.

What promised to be a refreshing addition to cumulative cultural evolution, by moving the focus from cultural transmission to technological innovation, falls flat through a lack of thoroughness, explanatory power, and data. A comprehensive theory of cumulative cultural change must carefully integrate all existing evidence in a cohesive multi-level account. We argue that the manuscript fails to do so convincingly.

Evolutionary scholars advance two major sorts of hypotheses to explain big events, such as the origin of agriculture. One hypothesis assumes that natural selection is so powerful that organisms are always close to an evolutionary equilibrium with current environment. Thus, any major changes will be a result of external processes having to do with the environment. The other camp imagines that evolution is a slow, halting, and biased process that is limited and directed by internal obstacles that thwart what natural (...) selection favors, for example, a particular somatic arrangement that is difficult to “engineer” quickly. Both kinds of constraints were probably involved in the trajectory leading to agriculture but perhaps at different timescales. (shrink)

An increasing number of non-model organisms are becoming accessible to genetic analysis in the field, as evolutionary biologists develop dense molecular genetic maps. Peichel et al.'s recent study[1] provides a microsatellite-based map for threespine stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus), and the first evidence for QTL affecting feeding morphology and defensive armor. This species has undergone rapid and parallel morphological and behavioral evolution, and there is now hope that some of the genes responsible for the divergence may soon be identified. BioEssays 24:487-489, (...) 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Drosophila imaginal discs (appendage primordia) have proved invaluable for deciphering cellular and molecular mechanisms of animal development. By combining the accessibility of the discs with the genetic tractability of the fruit fly, researchers have discovered key mechanisms of growth control, pattern formation and long‐range signaling. One of the principal experimental attractions of discs is their anatomical simplicity — they have long been considered to be cellular monolayers. During larval stages, however, the growing discs are 2‐sided sacs composed of a columnar (...) epithelium on one side and a squamous ‘peripodial’ epithelium on the other. Recent studies suggest important roles for peripodial epithelia in processes previously assumed to be confined to columnar cell monolayers. BioEssays 23:691–697, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

I argue that thompson's analysis of the argument proscribing abortion except to save the woman's life is inconsistent, For it commits thompson to the following set of statements: (1) all fetuses have a right not to be killed unjustly; (2) no fetus can be aborted/killed unjustly unless it possesses a right to a woman's body; (3) some fetuses do not possess a right to a woman's body. I suggest two alternative ways to deal with this inconsistency.

Personal biographical outline of being taught by, and encounters with, Peter Geach.

Here I look at the views of Mackie about the transitivity of causal statements. Mackie suggests that we replace total transitivity with a calculation which assigns a proportional value to partial causes; this allows us to work out an overall proportion of a single event in a causal chain. I marry the philosophical discussion with a sketch of tort law by means of an unusual hypothetical. I suggest that Mackie’s proportional analysis could be have a useful practical application since current (...) tort law regards causality as transitive and that total responsibility may be placed on the originator of connected but distinct events. (shrink)

While it is acknowledged that there is a need for more qualitative research on suicide, it is also clear that the ethics of undertaking such research need to be addressed. This article uses the case study of the authors’ experience of gaining ethics approval for a research project that asks people what it is like to feel suicidal to (a) analyse the limits of confidentiality and anonymity and (b) consider the ways in which the process of ethics review can shape (...) and constrain suicide research. This leads to a discussion of the ways in which ethics committees assess and monitor qualitative research more generally and some preliminary suggestions for how this might be improved. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment by T. J. GorringeLibby GibsonThe Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment T. J. Gorringe New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 309 pp. $90.00Building on arguments set forth in A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, and Redemption (2002), theologian Timothy Gorringe begins The Common Good and the Global Emergency by (...) exploring whether an idea of the common good is relevant in a multicultural society and, if so, how an account of the common good can give rise to an alternative economic paradigm grounded in grace. While respect for cultural differences and the rise of individualism may argue against a robust understanding of the common good, Gorringe looks to the concept of oikonomia, or household management, to express the concept of managing “our affairs in such a way as to further what we perceive to be good ends” (35). Since our understanding of the economy shapes every aspect of the built environment, Gorringe traces local, regional, and national economies to what Wendell Berry calls “the great economy” or God’s creation, redemption, and sustenance of all things.Gorringe grounds his arguments about the common good in his Trinitarian theology of the built environment, expressed as God the Creator, God the Reconciler, and God the Redeemer. The triune perichoretic nature of God is inherently relational; therefore, as humans made in God’s image, we cannot ignore our interdependence. While God the Creator offers a sense of the common good springs from creation, God the Reconciler gives Gorringe traction to discuss the many barriers—race, gender, class, and space—that divide human beings and how our built environments structure these separations. God the Redeemer is concerned with empowering human beings to challenge all things that destroy life; thus Gorringe sees his project as contributing a theology of liberation committed to justice and fullness of life for all humans.Gorringe argues that our best chance to identify a common good rests on constructively addressing the common bad that he calls the global emergency. This emergency can be seen in the doubling of the world’s population in the past forty years, the problem of climate change, and global resource depletion. Seeing climate change and food, water, and energy issues as among the most pressing ethical issues of the coming decades, Gorringe challenges the reader to examine how our current common values have degraded the environment [End Page 202] and the lives of people worldwide. Since he specifically addresses the built environment, Gorringe’s purview is necessarily anthropocentric and justified by the doctrine of incarnation. Yet the Creator God expresses great wisdom in the laws of nature, and much could be learned from the “built” environments in the animal kingdom. While this line of thought would clearly depart from the rigorous academic method of Gorringe’s analysis, the book arose from a feeling that the Lord instructed him to continue working in this area, and attending to other nonrational sources of wisdom could greatly enhance our understanding of God’s grace in all the world.Gorringe acknowledges that the chapters do not unfold linearly, and that he seeks to point out points of confluence. The fluidity with which he addresses theological, political, economic, architectural, sociological, and ethical issues leads the reader to an overall picture of the common good and its powers to liberate us from injustice while an exact map of this process may be difficult to draw. Gorringe clearly and directly addresses both critics and supporters of his previous work on the built environment and solidifies his case for attending to the ways that our built environments could express a common good, grounded in grace, that allows for the fullness of life for all beings.Libby GibsonVirginia Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)