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Author note: Penny A. Weiss, Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, is the author of Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics. Marilyn Friedman, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, is the author of What Are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory.

The ethical issues in conducting research on preventing HIV infection are among the most complex of any area of human subjects research. This article is an update of a 1987 article that addressed potential conflicts between research design and ethics with respect to AIDS prevention among injecting drug users. The present article reviews current ethical issues that arise in the design and conduct of HIV/AIDS prevention research focused on injecting drug users.

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...) a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness. (shrink)

Few novel or emerging infectious diseases have posed such vital ethical challenges so quickly and dramatically as the novel coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2. The World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern and recently classified Covid‐19 as a worldwide pandemic. As of this writing, the epidemic has not yet peaked in the United States, but community transmission is widespread. President Trump declared a national emergency as fifty governors declared state emergencies. In the coming weeks, hospitals will become overrun, stretched (...) to their capacities. When the health system becomes stretched beyond capacity, how can we ethically allocate scarce health goods and services? How can we ensure that marginalized populations can access the care they need? What ethical duties do we owe to vulnerable people separated from their families and communities? And how do we ethically and legally balance public health with civil liberties? (shrink)

The considerable attention to financial interests in clinical research has focused mostly on academic medical centers, even though the majority of clinical research is conducted in community practice settings. To fill this gap, this article maps the practices and policies in 73 community hospitals and several hundred specialized facilities around the country for reviewing clinical investigators’ financial relationships with research sponsors. Community hospitals face a substantially different mix of issues than academic medical centers do because their physician researchers are usually (...) not employees, and more of their studies are later-phase, multicenter trials. Accordingly, community physicians stand to benefit personally from per capita payments, but they tend to have less direct influence over research findings when compared with their academic peers. These and other contrasts require separate guidance for community-based organizations that takes into account their particular needs, circumstances, and institutional capacities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to Flage Lesley Friedman "The chiefexercise of the memory," Hume tells us, "is not to preserve the simple ideas, but their order and position."1 On Daniel Flage's interpretation ofHume, however, it is the only exercise ofthe memory (1985a, 1985b, 1990). Flage's account can accommodate onlymemories of complex ideas; he disallows the possibility of 'preserving* a simple idea in its simplicity. Yet there is an example of a (...) purely simple impression in the Treatise; and since for every impression there is in principle a corresponding idea which we can later recall, this example establishes the existence of a purely simple memory-idea. In what follows I will provide support for this claim, Flage's counterarguments (this volume) notwithstanding. Flage argues that given any perceived object, say a coloured dot, there is a visual field in which we perceive it. This field and the impression we receive from it, "must be a complex impression, that is, an impression that is composed of indefinitely many colour points. In this respect it is analogous to a pointillist painting or, to use a more contemporary example, a computer array composed of pixels" (1993, 190). Flage is probably right about this; from our point of view, it is implausible to suggest that there is any purely simple background, or worse, that there is no impression ofa background at all. Nonetheless, my concern is with what Hume thought and not with what is plausible orimplausible; and Hume does give an example ofa "background" that is notcomplex, namely, the scenarioinwhichwe perceive points oflight in darkness. We may observe, that when two bodies present themselves, where there wasformerly an entire darkness, the onlychange, that is discoverable, is in the appearance ofthese two objects, and that all the rest continues to be as before, a perfect negation oflight, and of every colour'd or visible object. This is not only true of what may be said to be remote from these bodies, but also of the very distance; which is interpos'd betwixt them; that being nothing but darkness, or the negation of light; without parts, without composition, invariable and indivisible. (T 57, bold italics added) I originally considered the ink spot experiment and theidea ofred in the dark as examples ofpurely simple impressions. Let me try this Volume XLX Number 1 199 LESLEYFRIEDMAN again, elaborating a bit more on the latter (what I take to be Hume's example of a version of the ink spot experiment). Early on in the Treatise Hume speaks of"that idea ofred which we form in the dark" (T 3). Let us then consider a red spot in complete darkness. Flage and I agree that this spot is qualitatively simple. Our disagreement is rooted in the nature ofthe "background," in this case the darkness. Flage claims that "the sighted-person sitting in the dark has an impression or impressions, namely, an impression of darkness" (1993, 190); and therefore the impression we have of the spot of red in darkness is not purely simple. In support of this claim he cites the followingevidence: Hume's remarks that (1) "the sighted-person sitting in the dark "receives no other perception... than what is common to him with one born blind' " (ibid., 189; T 55-56), and (2) "the idea of utter darkness can never be the same with that of vacuum" (T 56). Let me take each ofthese in turn. Presumably, the first quote is cited in order to estabUsh that the blind person does indeed have a perception (impression) of darkness. This cannot be right; ifsuch a person had an impression ofdarkness, he would also have an idea of darkness, and if we look to the part of the sentence which Flage leaves out of his quotation, we find the following: "and 'tis certain such-a-one [that is, a blind person] has no idea either of light or darkness" (T 56). Hume's point is simple: the reason that the blind person has no idea ofdarkness is because he has no impression of darkness; and we are in the same position as him when we are sitting in the dark. Nor does the second quote provide evidence for the... (shrink)

It has been accepted since the early part of the Century that there is no problem formalizing mathematics in standard formal systems of axiomatic set theory. Most people feel that they know as much as they ever want to know about how one can reduce natural numbers, integers, rationals, reals, and complex numbers to sets, and prove all of their basic properties. Furthermore, that this can continue through more and more complicated material, and that there is never a real problem.

The deployment of the Albanian admirative as well as the evidential particles kinse ‘allegedly’ and gjoja ‘supposedly’ in Kosovar electronic news sources to render either dubitative or neutral reports — depending on both the source and the timing — contributed to the project of an independent Kosovo. The usages can be divided into three periods: 1994–1997, 1998–1999, and post-1999. During the first period, usage was exclusively dubitative and deployed for Serbian news sources. During the second period, which corresponded to the (...) intensification of the armed uprising, usage shifted to neutrality, and during the third period, after the NATO bombing campaign, it returned somewhat to dubitativity, this time aimed at UN and NATO sources. The discussion demonstrates how pragmatics and grammatical categories contribute to the construction of political narratives and argues that a socially informed linguistic analysis is crucial to understanding how politics is performed in the world. (shrink)

A beneficial effect of gesture on learning has been demonstrated in multiple domains, including mathematics, science, and foreign language vocabulary. However, because gesture is known to co-vary with other non-verbal behaviors, including eye gaze and prosody along with face, lip, and body movements, it is possible the beneficial effect of gesture is instead attributable to these other behaviors. We used a computer-generated animated pedagogical agent to control both verbal and non-verbal behavior. Children viewed lessons on mathematical equivalence in which an (...) avatar either gestured or did not gesture, while eye gaze, head position, and lip movements remained identical across gesture conditions. Children who observed the gesturing avatar learned more, and they solved problems more quickly. Moreover, those children who learned were more likely to transfer and generalize their knowledge. These findings provide converging evidence that gesture facilitates math learning, and they reveal the potential for using technology to study non-verbal behavior in controlled experiments. (shrink)

In this unique volume, some of today's most eminent political philosophers examine the thought of John Rawls, focusing in particular on his most recent work. These original essays explore diverse issues, including the problem of pluralism, the relationship between constitutive commitment and liberal institutions, just treatment of dissident minorities, the constitutional implications of liberalism, international relations, and the structure of international law. The first comprehensive study of Rawls's recent work, The Idea of Political Liberalism will be indispensable for political philosophers (...) and theorists interested in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

In How States Think, John Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato argue that expected-utility maximization is too subjective to serve as the basis for making rational decisions in the realm of national security. They claim that rationality in security studies should instead be defined by whether leaders conduct deliberative, theory-driven reasoning. This essay explains why Mearsheimer and Rosato’s critique of expected-utility theory is unpersuasive, and how their conception of theory-driven reasoning ignores key aspects of decision-making that national security officials can feasibly address. (...) Lyndon Johnson’s decision to take the United States to war in Vietnam provides a vivid example of how leaders can meet Mearsheimer and Rosato’s criteria for rationality despite clear shortfalls of analytic reasoning. (shrink)

The singular message in Global Health Law is that we must strive to achieve global health with justice—improved population health, with a fairer distribution of benefits of good health. Global health entails ensuring the conditions of good health—public health, universal health coverage, and the social determinants of health—while justice requires closing today’s vast domestic and global health inequities. These conditions for good health should be incorporated into public policy, supplemented by specific actions to overcome barriers to equity. A new global (...) health treaty grounded in the right to health and aimed at health equity—a Framework Convention on Global Health —stands out for its possibilities in helping to achieve global health with justice. This far-reaching legal instrument would establish minimum standards for universal health coverage and public health measures, with an accompanying national and international financing framework, require a constant focus on health equity, promote Health in All Policies and global governance for health, and advance the principles of good governance, including accountability. While achieving an FCGH is certainly ambitious, it is a struggle worth the efforts of us all. The treaty’s basis in the right to health, which has been agreed to by all governments, has powerful potential to form the foundation of global governance for health. From interpretations of UN treaty bodies to judgments of national courts, the right to health is now sufficiently articulated to serve this role, with the individual’s right to health best understood as a function of a social, political, and economic environment aimed at equity. However great the political challenge of securing state agreement to the FCGH, it is possible. States have joined other treaties with significant resource requirements and limitations on their sovereignty without significant reciprocal benefits from other states, while important state interests would benefit from the FCGH. And from integrating the FCGH into the existing human rights system to creative forms of compliance and enforcement and strengthened domestic legal and political accountability mechanisms, the treaty stands to improve right to health compliance. The potential for the FCGH to bring the right to health nearer universal reality calls for us to embark on the journey towards securing this global treaty. (shrink)

In this insightful study of the common origins of analytic and continental philosophy, Friedman looks at how social and political events intertwined and influenced philosophy during the early twentieth century, ultimately giving rise to the two very different schools of thought. He shows how these two approaches, now practiced largely in isolation from one another, were once opposing tendencies within a common discussion. Already polarized by their philosophical disagreements, these approaches were further split apart by the rise of Naziism (...) and the resulting emigration of all influential German-speaking philosophers except for Heidegger. Although the book gives a general overview of the philosophical issues of the period, the author pays special attention to the relationships among three key twentieth-century philosophers: Rudolf Carnap, Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

My focus in this work is on giving an analysis of Peirce's post-1895 remarks about realism and the realism/nominalism debate. I argue that there is a consistent position to be found in these writings, yet in order to understand his position we must look not only at Peirce's remarks on realism, but also to the various themes connected with his realism, viz. to his discussion of the categories, pragmatism, and opposing views. ;From Peirce's direct remarks on realism we learn that (...) there are two kinds of universals, viz., laws and possibilities , both of which are independent of mind. Peirce's claim that Firsts are real as possibilities, and Thirds are real as that to which Seconds conform, constitutes his universal-realism . Thirds, however, are laws, that which science seeks to discover. The subjunctive conditionals which express scientific theories are either true or false, and the entities to which they refer are real or figments. In this consists Peirce's scientific realism, or "scholastic realism". ;From Peirce's discussions of the categories and of nominalism, we learn that there are two kinds of qualities: embodied and unembodied. The latter are uninstantiated universals, the former are dispositions. Peirce's doctrine of pragmaticism is an analysis of embodied qualities, i.e., what it means to say that "an object possesses a character." I suggest that Peirce insists that uninstantiables as necessary for realism about laws because they ground the counterfactuals which law-statements support. ;Because Peirce has both uninstantiated universals, and because he also believes that there is a sense in which universals really are "in" things as parts, he is neither Transcendental nor Immanent Realist exclusively. (shrink)

Many scholars believe that traditional courses in ethics (especially business ethics) have not been successful in making students ethical. The best that educators can hope is that these courses will help build ethical awareness. It is thus apparent that the apparatus used to teach ethics does not inspire the intellectual leap needed between the abstract awareness of ethical issues to the functional changes in behavior and decision-making. This paper posits that the creative arts, including literature, poetry, music, pictorial art, and (...) film, may provide the tools to help bridge that gap. The creative arts can profoundly impact individuals and cause social change by gradually implanting values and changing beliefs. They can instill morals by using stories, sounds, and images and arouse the passion needed to change behaviors. (shrink)

Jan Narveson criticizes the view expressed in my Libertarian Philosophy in the Real World that there is no orthodox libertarian position on the ethics of abortion. He asserts that fetuses lack the defining characteristics of personhood, and thus are ineligible for what he terms “intrinsic” rights under his, and presumably any other, plausible libertarian theory. My counterargument is threefold: Narveson’s contractarianism can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the pro-life perspective; because his theory permits no principled distinction (...) between the moral status of third trimester fetuses and newborns, the contrary reading of his social contract produces a result that is implausible and even repellent; and even if his version of contractarianism does imply a unique, aggressively pro-choice stance on abortion, there are competing libertarian theories that are receptive to pro-life views. (shrink)

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi is best known as the founder of Soka Gakkai, the association of lay members of the Nichiren Shoshu sect of Buddhism that has grown to number more than ten million followers throughout the world, including some 200,000 Nichiren Shoshu of America adherents in the United States. But Makiguchi had spent a lifetime as an educator, developing his "value creating" educationai philosophy, before he founded Soka Gakkai. In the 1930s he proposed educational reforms that were fully as revolutionary as (...) those advanced by his American counterpart John Dewey. He is one of Japan's most significant yet perhaps least recognized educators. Makiguchi said that Japan's educational system was haphazard, unplanned, fragmented, and useless. Convinced that the pursuit and creation of values are the ultimate purpose of life, he proposed a "value creating" educational system. Defining the three greatest values in life as goodness, beauty, and gain, Makiguchi held that through education people should increase their ability to create values and thus find happiness. (shrink)