The new National Institutes of Health (NIH) Policy on the Use of a Single Institutional Review Board (sIRB) for Multi-Site Research was adopted primarily to simplify and speed the review of complex multisite clinical trials. However, speeding review requires overcoming a number of obstacles. Perhaps the most substantial obstacle is the time and effort needed to develop reliance agreements among the participating sites. We conducted 102 semistructured interviews with sIRB personnel, including directors, chairs, reviewers, and staff, from 20 IRBs that (...) acted as sIRBs for multisite research, including 6 commercial/independent sIRBs, and 10 university-based academic and 4 federal sIRBs. Almost without exception, the interviewees agreed that reliance agreements were complex, difficult to develop, and time-consuming. A major problem for relying sites was that different agreements specified different responsibilities for the relying sites. Attitudes differed about whether these problems will be resolved as IRB staff and managers become more experienced with sIRBs. However it is clear that the process of developing reliance agreements must be simplified. Federal assistance in standardizing at least some sections of reliance agreements might reduce the difficulties involved. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hamann and the Philosophy of David Hume CHARLES W. SWAIN There have been many and various interpretations of Hume's philosophy; no one, so far as I know, has ever viewed him as a romantic. On the other hand, Johann Georg Hamann, "the wizard of the North," has gained his modicum of notoriety mainly through his influence on German romanticism, plus the fact that Kierkegaard mentions him approvingly, and (...) even quotes him in the Philosophical Fragments. Hume has been regarded as a sceptic, an empiricist, a naturalist and a positivist; Hamann is usually regarded as an irrationalist and proto-existentialist. 1 These two thinkers were certainly very different; yet Hamann had a profound appreciation for the philsophy of Hume. I want to suggest in this paper that a study of the use to which Hamann put Hume's philosophy may raise some difficulties for the prevailing view of Hamann's thought, and may also open up a somewhat different perspective on Hume's thought. Hamann found himself in rebellion against the spirit of his age. He saw in Hume an ally in his struggle against the over-confident rationalism of the Enlightenment. As an apologist, Hamann set himself the task of "smoking out the stylish spirit of the century by means of doubt." e He set about this task in a series of strange apologetic works, written in a deliberately mystifying, sometimes shocking style. His anti-rationalism made him a hero to the later romantics, and a mystery to his friends and readersmamong them his fellow citizen, Immanuel Kant. Beginning as a university student, Hamann had become a disciple of the Enlightenment, seeking his place in the brave new world of the early eighteenth century. He tried a career as a tutor, along with many a young man seeking an independent and comfortable life. Eventually he accepted a vaguely defined position with the mercantile firm of Berens in Riga, operated by the family of his college friend Johann Cristoph Berens. Hamann undertook a "secret mission" for the Berens firm which brought him to London in 1758 where, lonely and disheartened, he underwent a personal crisis which changed the direction of his life and resulted in his career as a man of letters and an apologist for Christianity against the Enlightenment. Having been a devotee for over a decade, Hamann felt that he knew the spirit of the Enlightenment. His opposition, however, baffling it may have appeared to his contemporaries, was not intended as obscurantism. He had his 1Hamann has been much more in vogue on the continent than in the English-speaking world. According to Martin Sells, Theologische Aspekte zur gegenw~irtigen Hamann-deutung (GSttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1957),p. 105,der Magus has been claimed as a spiritual ancestor by virtually every European intellectual movement of the last 150 yearst Philologische Einf~illeund Zwei]el, Iqadler iii, 41. [343] 344 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY "reasons," and a study of his use of Hume's philosophy will help to clarify this aspect of his thought. Hamann's acquaintance with the philosophy of Hume dates from his university days, where he was probably introduced to the world of English letters by his fondly remembered teacher, Heinrich Rappolt. Rappolt was a Wolffian, but not at all interested in the attempt to reconcile Wolffianism with pietistic Christianity --in contrast to his more renowned colleague, Martin Knutzen, Kant's teacher. Rappolt had traveled and studied in England, and apparently delighted in opening these new intellectual vistas to his students, s Hamann thus became familiar with Hume's political and economic writings, as well as his philosophical works. Already in 1756, during his Holmeister period, he had worked through an edition of Hume's works which contained various economic and political essays as well as the First Enquiry. 4 Hume's works were among the books which he bought (but perhaps never read) during his stay in London. In 1759, when he published his first apologetic work, Socratische Denku~rdigkeiten, he was (in his own words) "full of Hume." 5 He cites Hume throughout his literary career, and acknowledges his intellectual debt to Hume both publicly and privately. One of his last undertakings was a translation... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The publication of George Yancy's latest book, Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher (2020), provides a welcome opportunity to reflect not just on the book itself but on ‘Black’ public philosophy and how it should be conceptualised. In the first part of the essay, I look at public philosophy as a recent self‐conscious exercise in the profession and then – citing Critical Theory's coinage from decades ago of the idea of a ‘counterpublic’ – raise the (...) question of whether the concept of a ‘Black counterpublic philosophy’ might not be a better designation. The second part defends this claim by enumerating some of the key obstacles facing Black philosophers in the field: a minuscule population, a stigmatising identity shaped by the legacy of racial slavery in modernity, the denial of a recognised philosophical tradition, and a racial research focus at odds with the discipline's self‐conception as removed from the corporeal. Finally, the third part situates Yancy's work and achievement against this background, while warning (as illustrated by the virulent backlash he has encountered) of the dangers of such an enterprise. (shrink)

A distinguished political philosopher with years of experience teaching in undergraduate liberal arts programs, Anderson shows how the ideal of practical reason can reconcile academia’s research aims with public expectations for universities: the preparation of citizens, the training of professionals, the communication of a cultural inheritance. It is not good enough, he contends, to simply say that the university should stick to the great books of the classic tradition, or to denounce this tradition and declare that all important questions are (...) a matter of personal or cultural choice. By applying the methods of practical reason, instead, teachers and students will think critically about the essential purposes of any human activity and the underlying arguments of any text. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In few cases among modern religious ethicists are the contemporary issues concerning the problem of norms and of criteria more intriguingly brought to the fore than in the ethics of Martin Buber.

This previously-unpublished essay by the late Charles W. Mills (1951–2021) seeks to demonstrate the racially-structured character of the universe created by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Written long before the popular film series, the essay critically examines Tolkien's novels and comments on the nature of fictional creation. Mills argues that Tolkien designs a racial hierarchy in the novels that recapitulates the central racist myth of European thought.

Zygon®, Volume 56, Issue 4, Page 1008-1026, December 2021.

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 60-70.

How do people use past experience to generalise to novel cases? This paper reports four experiments exploring the significance on one class of past experiences: encounters with negative or contrasting cases. In trying to decide whether all ravens are black, what is the effect of learning about a non-raven that is not black? Two experiments with preschool-aged, young school-aged, and adult participants revealed that providing a negative example in addition to a positive example supports generalisation. Two additional experiments went on (...) to ask which kinds of negative examples offer the most support for generalisations. These studies contrasted similarity-based and category-based accounts of inductive generalisation. Results supported category-based predictions, but only for preschool-aged children. Overall, the younger children showed a greater reliance on negative evidence than did older children and adults. Most things we encounter in the world are negative evidence for our generalisations. Understanding the role of negative evidence is central for psychological theories of inductive generalisation. (shrink)