BackgroundWhen conducting research with Indigenous populations consent should be sought from both individual participants and the local community. We aimed to search and summarise the literature about methods for seeking consent for research with Indigenous populations.MethodsA systematic literature search was conducted for articles that describe or evaluate the process of seeking informed consent for research with Indigenous participants. Guidelines for ethical research and for seeking consent with Indigenous people are also included in our review.ResultsOf 1447 articles found 1391 were excluded (...) ; 56 were relevant and included. Articles were categorised into original research that evaluated the consent process or publications detailing the process of seeking consent and guidelines for ethical research. Guidelines were categorised into international ; national and state/regional/local guidelines. In five studies based in Australia, Canada and The United States of America the consent process with Indigenous people was objectively evaluated. In 13 other studies interpreters, voice recording, videos, pictures, flipcharts and “plain language” forms were used to assist in seeking consent but these processes were not evaluated. Some Indigenous organisations provide examples of community-designed resources for seeking consent and describe methods of community engagement, but none are evaluated. International, national and local ethical guidelines stress the importance of upholding Indigenous values but fail to specify methods for engaging communities or obtaining individual consent. In the ‘Grey literature’ concerns about the consent process are identified but no solutions are offered.ConclusionConsultation with Indigenous communities is needed to determine how consent should be sought from the community and the individual, and how to evaluate this process. (shrink)

In this paper we review the factors alleged to be responsible for the creation of inaccurate reports among preschool-aged children, focusing on so-called "source misattribution errors." We present the first round of results from an ongoing program of research that suggests that source misattributions could be a powerful mechanism underlying children′s false beliefs about having experienced fictitious events. Preliminary findings from this program of research indicate that all children of all ages are equally susceptible to making source misattributions. Data from (...) a follow-up wave of data indicate that very young children may be disproportionately vulnerable to these kinds of errors when the procedure is changed slightly to create mental images more easily. This vulnerability leads younger preschoolers, on occasion, to claim that they actually experienced events that they only thought about. These preliminary findings are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate over the veracity and durability of delayed reports of early memories, repressed memories, dissociative states, and the validity risks posed by therapeutic techniques that entail repeated visually guided imagery inductions. (shrink)

The consent and community engagement process for research with Indigenous communities is rarely evaluated. Research protocols are not always collaborative, inclusive or culturally respectful. If participants do not trust or understand the research, selection bias may occur in recruitment, affecting study results potentially denying participants the opportunity to provide more knowledge and greater understanding about their community. Poorly informed consent can also harm the individual participant and the community as a whole. Invited by local Aboriginal community leaders of the Fitzroy (...) Valley, the Kimberley, Western Australia, The Picture Talk project explores the consent process for research. Focus groups of Aboriginal community members were conducted to establish preferences for methods of seeking individual consent. Transcripts were analysed through NVivo10 Qualitative software using grounded theory with inductive and deductive coding. Themes were synthesised with quotes highlighted. Focus groups with Aboriginal community members were facilitated by a Community Navigator as a cultural guide and interpreter and a researcher. Participants were recruited from all main language groups of the Fitzroy Valley – Gooniyandi, Walmajarri, Wangkatjungka, Bunuba and Nikinya. Participants were aged ≥18 years, with 5 female groups and one male group. Themes identified include: Reputation and trust is essential; The Community Navigator is key; Pictures give the words meaning – milli milli versus Pictures; Achieving consensus in circles; Signing for consent; and Research is needed in the Valley. Aboriginal communities of the Fitzroy Valley recommend that researchers collaborate with local leaders, develop trust and foster a good reputation in the community prior to research. Local Aboriginal researchers should be employed to provide cultural guidance throughout the research process and interpret local languages especially for elders. Pictures are preferred to written text to explain research information and most prefer to sign for consent. The Fitzroy Valley welcomes research when collaborative and for the benefit of the community. Future research could include exploring how to support young people, promote health screening and improve understanding of medical knowledge. (shrink)

The role of values in scientific research has become an important topic of discussion in both scholarly and popular debates. Pundits across the political spectrum worry that research on topics like climate change, evolutionary theory, vaccine safety, and genetically modified foods has become overly politicized. At the same time, it is clear that values play an important role in science by limiting unethical forms of research and by deciding what areas of research have the greatest relevance for society. Deciding how (...) to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate influences of values in scientific research is a matter of vital importance.Recently, philosophers of science have written a great deal on this topic, but most of their work has been directed toward a scholarly audience. This book makes the contemporary philosophical literature on science and values accessible to a wide readership. It examines case studies from a variety of research areas, including climate science, anthropology, chemical risk assessment, ecology, neurobiology, biomedical research, and agriculture. These cases show that values have necessary roles to play in identifying research topics, choosing research questions, determining the aims of inquiry, responding to uncertainty, and deciding how to communicate information. Kevin Elliott focuses not just on describing roles for values but also on determining when their influences are actually appropriate. He emphasizes several conditions for incorporating values in a legitimate fashion, and highlights multiple strategies for fostering engagement between stakeholders so that value influences can be subjected to careful and critical scrutiny. (shrink)

That some propositions are testable, while others are not, was a fundamental idea in the philosophical program known as logical empiricism. That program is now widely thought to be defunct. Quine’s (1953) “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and Hempel’s (1950) “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning” are among its most notable epitaphs. Yet, as we know from Mark Twain’s comment on an obituary that he once had the pleasure of reading about himself, the report of a death can (...) be an exaggeration. The research program that began in Vienna and Berlin continues, even though many of the specific formulations that came out of those circles are flawed and need to be replaced. (shrink)

Throughout most of human history women have been defined by their biological role in reproduction, seen first and foremost as gestators, which has led to the reproductive system being subjected to outside interference. The womb was perceived as dangerous and an object which husbands, doctors and the state had a legitimate interest in controlling. In this article, we consider how notions of conflict surrounding the womb have endured over time. We demonstrate how concerns seemingly generated by the invisibility of reproduction (...) and the inaccessibility of the womb have translated into similar arguments for controlling women, as technology increases the accessibility of the female body and the womb. Developments in reproductive medicine, from in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to surrogacy, have enabled women and men who would otherwise have been childless to become parents. Uterus transplants and ‘artificial wombs’ could provide additional alternatives to natural gestation. An era of ‘womb technology’ dawns. Some argue that such technology providing an alternative to ‘natural’ gestation could be a source of liberation for female persons because reproduction will no longer be something necessarily confined to the female body. ‘Womb technology’, however, also has the potential to exacerbate the labelling of the female body as a source of danger and an ‘imperfect’ site of gestation, thus replaying rudimentary and regressive arguments about controlling female behaviour. We argue that pernicious narratives about control, conflict and the womb must be addressed in the face of these technological developments. (shrink)

I discuss two subjects in Samir Okasha’s excellent book, Evolution and the Levels of Selection. In consonance with Okasha’s critique of the conventionalist view of the units of selection problem, I argue that conventionalists have not attended to what realists mean by group, individual, and genic selection. In connection with Okasha’s discussion of the Price equation and contextual analysis, I discuss whether the existence of these two quantitative frameworks is a challenge to realism.

The concept of vulnerability is widely used in bioethics, particularly in research ethics and public health ethics. The traditional approach construes vulnerability as inherent in individuals or the groups to which they belong and views vulnerability as requiring special protections. Florencia Luna and other bioethicists continue to challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing and applying the term. Luna began proposing a layered approach to this concept and recently extended this proposal to offer two new concepts to analyze the concept of vulnerability, (...) namely understanding external conditions that trigger vulnerability and layers of vulnerability with cascading effects. Luna's conception of vulnerability is useful, which we demonstrate by applying her layered view and the new analyses in multiple contexts. We begin by outlining Luna's view and we use vignettes from healthcare involving transgender patients, the care of patients in psychiatric contexts, and research involving prisoners to illustrate how each part of Luna's concept elucidates important moral issues. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey's ‘Truth and Probability’ sketches a proposal for the empirical measurement of credences, along with a corresponding set of axioms for a representation theorem intended to characterize the preference conditions under which this measurement process is applicable. There are several features of Ramsey's formal system which make it attractive and worth developing. However, in specifying his measurement process and his axioms, Ramsey introduces the notion of an ethically neutral proposition, the assumed existence of which plays a key role throughout (...) Ramsey's system. A number of later representation theorems have also appealed to ethically neutral propositions. The notion of ethical neutrality has often been called into question — in fact, there seem to be good reasons to suppose that no ethically neutral propositions exist. In this paper, I present several new, Ramsey-inspired representation theorems that avoid any appeal to ethical neutrality. These theorems preserve the benefits of Ramsey's system, without paying the cost of ethical neutrality. (shrink)

Why do we wish to die later but do not wish to have been created earlier? There is no puzzle here. It is false that if we had been created earlier we would have lived longer lives. Why don’t we wish to have been created earlier but with our actual times of death? That wish simply is not mandated by the more general wish to have lived a longer life. Furthermore, one might prefer one’s actual life to the better, but (...) considerably different, life one would have lived at an earlier time. (shrink)

Citing grounds of conscience, pharmacists are increasingly refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception, or the "morning-after pill." Whether correctly or not, these pharmacists believe that emergency contraception either constitutes the destruction of post-conception human life, or poses a significant risk of such destruction. We argue that the liberty of conscientious refusal grounds a strong moral claim, one that cannot be defeated solely by consideration of the interests of those seeking medication. We examine, and find lacking, five arguments for requiring (...) pharmacists to fill prescriptions. However, we argue that in their professional context, pharmacists benefit from liberty restrictions on those seeking medication. What would otherwise amount to very strong claims can be defeated if they rest on some prior restriction of the liberty of others. We conclude that the issue of what policy should require pharmacists to do must be settled by way of a theory of second best. Asking "What is second best?" rather than "What is best?" offers a way to navigate the liberty restrictions that may be fixed obstacles to optimality. (shrink)

The logical empiricists said some good things about epistemology and scientific method. However, they associated those epistemological ideas with some rather less good ideas about philosophy of language. There is something epistemologically suspect about statements that cannot be tested. But to say that those statements are meaningless is to go too far. And there is something impossible about trying to figure out which of two empirically equivalent theories is true. But to say that those theories are synonymous is also to (...) go too far. My goal in this paper is not to resuscitate all these positivist ideas, but to revisit just one of them. Instrumentalism is the idea that theories are instruments for making predictions. Of course, no one would disagree that this is one of the things we use theories to do. In just the same way, no one could disagree with the emotivist claim that one of the things we do with ethical terms like "good" and "right" is to express our feelings of approval and disapproval. Instrumentalism and emotivism become contentious, and therefore interesting, when these claims are supplemented. (shrink)

The target paper (building on Ginsburg and Jablonka in JTB 381:55–60, 2015, The evolution of the sensitive soul: Learning and the origins of consciousness, MIT Press, USA, 2019) makes a significant and novel claim: that positive cases of non-human consciousness can be identified via the capacity of unlimited associative learning (UAL). In turn, this claim is generated by a novel methodology, which is that of identifying an evolutionary ‘transition marker’, which is claimed to have theoretical and empirical advantages over other (...) approaches. In this commentary I argue that UAL does not function as a successful transition marker (as defined by the authors), and has internal problems of its own. However, I conclude that it is still a very productive anchor for new research on the evolution of consciousness. (shrink)

Arising and emptiness are the two essential Buddhist concepts, which when understood, lead to the highest school of Buddhist philosophy.

Because men are overrepresented within positions of power, men are perceived as the default in academia. Androcentric bias emerges whereby research by men and/or dominated by men is perceived as higher quality and gains more attention. We examined if these androcentric biases materialize within fields that study bias. How do individuals in close contact with psychology view psychology research outlets with titles including the words women, gender, sex, or feminism or contain the words men or masculinity versus psychology journals that (...) publish other-specialized research, and do these perceptions differ in the general public? While the men-related journal was less meritorious than its other-specialty journal, evidence emerged supporting androcentric bias such that the men-related journal was more favorable than the other sex/gender-related journals. Further, undergraduate men taking psychology classes rated sex/gender-related versus other-specialty journals as less favorable, were less likely to recommend subscription, and rated the journals as lower quality. Low endorsement of feminist ideology was associated with less support for sex/gender-related journals versus matched other-specialty journals. Decreased subscription recommendations for sex/gender-related journals were mediated by decreased favorability and quality beliefs, especially for men and those low in feminist ideology. However, we found possible androcentric-interest within the public sphere. The public reach of articles published in sex/gender-related was greater than other-specialty journals. The consequences of these differential perceptions for students versus the public and the impact on women’s advancement in social science and psychological science are discussed. (shrink)

Part One addresses the question whether the fact that some persons love something, worship it, or deeply care about it, can endow moral status on that thing. I argue that the answer is “no.” While some cases lend great plausibility to the view that love or worship can endow moral status, there are other cases in which love or worship clearly fails to endow moral status. Furthermore, there is no principled way to distinguish these two types of cases, so we (...) must conclude that love or worship never endow moral status. Part Two takes up the hard question of why we have to be careful of things that others love or worship, given that the things do not thereby have moral status. I argue that it is sometimes bad for those who love or worship the things if we mistreat them. I develop an account of when love and worship, and person projects more generally, succeed in expanding the scope of what counts as good or bad for the person engaged in the project. (shrink)

Globalization is often seen as the final stage in the transition towards a market economy. It is argued that a side-effect of globalization is cultural homogeneity and loss of life world, or ‘McDonaldization’. McDonaldization represents the rationalization of society in the quest for extreme efficiency. More recently, Meštrović has argued that the rationalization of emotions has also occurred and that Western societies are entering a postemotional phase. In postemotional societies there has been a separation of emotion from action. The result (...) is synthetic, manufactured emotions manipulated and standardized for mass consumption. In this paper I explore what it means to nurse in a ‘postemotional society’ and what impact this dulling of the emotions has had on a profession that locates ‘care’ as its central defining concept. My aim is to generate critical discussion of the shape and direction of contemporary society and the role of nursing within it. (shrink)

"We doubt not the destiny of our country— that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet ...

Linguistic and non-linguistic pattern learning have been studied separately, but we argue for a comparative approach. Analogous inductive problems arise in phonological and visual pattern learning. Evidence from three experiments shows that human learners can solve them in analogous ways, and that human performance in both cases can be captured by the same models. We test GMECCS, an implementation of the Configural Cue Model in a Maximum Entropy phonotactic-learning framework with a single free parameter, against the alternative hypothesis that learners (...) seek featurally simple algebraic rules. We study the full typology of patterns introduced by Shepard, Hovland, and Jenkins (), instantiated as both phonotactic patterns and visual analogs, using unsupervised training. Unlike SHJ, Experiments 1 and 2 found that both phonotactic and visual patterns that depended on fewer features could be more difficult than those that depended on more features, as predicted by GMECCS but not by rule-seeking. GMECCS also correctly predicted performance differences between stimulus subclasses within each pattern. A third experiment tried supervised training to elicit simple rule-seeking phonotactic learning, but cue-based behavior persisted. We conclude that similar cue-based cognitive processes are available for phonological and visual concept learning, and hence that studying either kind of learning can lead to significant insights about the other. (shrink)

R. K. Elliott; VIII—Aesthetic Theory and the Experience of Art, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 June 1967, Pages 111–126, https:/.

This chapter will discuss ethical issues connected with neuroscientific research on prisoners, focusing specifically on whether participating in such research should always be disregarded when making decisions about early release from prison. It was once routine in some jurisdictions for a prisoner’s participation in medical research to count as “good behaviour”, which could be given weight in decisions about early release. However, medical ethicists now widely regard this practice as ethically problematic, because prisoners might feel pressurised to participate in medical (...) research programmes by the desire to escape a coercive and harsh prison environment, and thus their agreement to take part in the programme might not satisfy the freedom requirement for valid consent. Yet, there may be a tension between traditional medical ethics and theories of punishment (a tension which also arises in other contexts at the interface between medicine and punishment). From the perspective of retributive or communication/reform-based theories of punishment, it might seem unfair for parole boards to disregard willingness to participate in medical research, if the prisoner were motivated by altruistic considerations. This altruism might indicate that the prisoner “deserves” a shorter sentence or may be a sign that the prisoner has reformed. This chapter will consider whether/how this tension between traditional medical ethics and penal theories can be resolved. For example, if the medical research involves relatively safe interventions such as fish oil pills or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), then the above-mentioned worries about prisoners’ ability to provide free consent may be less pressing than if the risks of side-effects were greater. Furthermore, the validity of consent also seems to depend partly on whether the prison conditions are humane or excessively harsh. In addition, problems also arise in this context from within penal theories. Ironically, transparency about what factors will be taken into account in decisions about early release, which would presumably be encouraged by communication/reform theories, could raise the possibility that the prisoner was motivated to participate in the research programme by a desire for early release rather than altruism, thus making it harder to determine whether participation is a genuine sign of reform. (shrink)

Moral disengagement is a process whereby the self-regulatory mechanisms that would otherwise sanction unethical conduct can be selectively disabled. The present research proposed that moral disengagement might be adopted in the endorsement of asylum seeker policies in Australia, and in order to test this, a scale was developed and was validated in two studies. Factor analysis demonstrated that a 2-factor, 16-item structure had the best fit, and the construct validity of the scale was supported. Results provide evidence for the use (...) of moral disengagement in the context of asylum seekers as a means of rationalizing conduct that may otherwise be sanctioned. (shrink)

There are questions about how ethics is best taught to undergraduate business students. There has been a proliferation in the number of stand-alone ethics courses for undergraduate students but research on the effectiveness of integrated versus stand-alone mode of delivery is inconclusive. Christensen et al. :347–368, 2007), in a comprehensive review of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability education, investigated how ethics education has changed over the last 20 years, including the issue of integration of these topics into the core (...) course offerings. We use Brenner and Molander’s :57–71, 1977) situational ethics survey instrument to examine the effect of the mode of delivery of business ethics education on undergraduate student responses. We found a significant difference on mode of delivery. Studies have also found interesting results in respect of the effect of cultural differences and gender on the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. While not the primary focus of this study, we also looked at the influence of gender and culture on students’ responses. Our results indicate significant differences in respect of mode of delivery and culture. In contrast to other studies, we found that gender was not significant. We did test for any interactive effects of gender, culture and mode of delivery. However, no significant differences were found. (shrink)

Michel Foucault showed by his genealogical method that history is random. It comprises sites of disarray and dispersal. In those sites, Simone de Beauvoir wrote philosophy through lived experience of woman as Other in relation to man as the Absolute. Here lies a fecund site for revisionist analysis of female cultural production and its relevance to a philosophy of education. The paper works with a feminist approach to the politics of knowledge, examining textual and political strategies in the recording of (...) history and the ‘othering’ of women through dominant cultural discourses. Infusing this discussion is a feminist politics of interrogation on cultural change for women. The paper investigates contributions of women to fields of art, politics, education and philosophy, and to the ways their contributions have been considered, received, positioned. Different approaches to feminism become apparent in the different conditions of knowledge under discussion. This leads to a final consideration of femi... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Victims in VogueElizabeth Bailie (bio)Donning white robes of slender flesh,They saunter the catwalk,Like a Treblinka corridorBrazen in their stolen innocence.Modeling Giacommetti's latest line,These coquettes of contagionKneel self-scourgedBefore their own shrines.Public penitents,Slim tokens of transfiguration,They withdraw, unforgiven,In ceremonial hunger.Elizabeth Bailie Elizabeth Bailie is a poet, writer, and lay contemplative who lives in the hills of central Massachusetts just up the road from St. Joseph's Trappist Monastery, her spiritual (...) home.Copyright © 2006 Michigan State University Press... (shrink)

In the period 1800–1870, French physicians approached psychic illness (Philippe Pinel’s “neurosis”) within competing “cerebralist” and “visceralist” frameworks. Cerebralism, which dominated the specialty of mental medicine, sought the origins of psychic illness in lesions of the brain and central nervous system. “Visceralism,” upheld by generalists, clung to the view of the ancients that psychic disorder was seated in the abdominal viscera. The distinction enjoyed credibility thanks to widespread acceptance of Xavier Bichat’s “two lives” doctrine, which demarcated functions of the central (...) and the “vegetative” nervous systems. Once the “two lives” conception was undercut after midcentury, cerebralists sought to draw disturbances of appetite, digestion, and eating within the domain of the central nervous system. This essay suggests that historical study of “hysterical anorexia” and related disease entities that displaced “neuroses of the stomach” has overemphasized sociocultural determinants to the neglect of the internal dynamics of biomedical science. (shrink)

Grounded in human experience, this accessible introduction to principles in Catholic morality focuses on moral development, not simply the acquisition of learning. The book begins with a historical overview of moral theology and goes on to examine such issues as conscience, freedom, fundamental option, authority, law, sin, and conversion.

I begin by examining the answer to a traditional puzzle concerning supererogatory acts: if they are good to do, why are they not required? The answer often given is that they are optional acts because they cost the agent too much. This view has parallels with the traditional view of religious sacrifice, which involves offering up something or someone valuable as a gift or victim and experiencing a ‘cost’ as part of the ritual. There are problems with the idea that (...) costs justify the optional nature of supererogatory acts, however, and I suggest that these problems mirror the tensions that are found in Christian theology when a traditional view of sacrifice is adopted. (shrink)

This essay considers whether the model of conscience operative in Christian ethics, what I call the “reflexive conscience,” is adequate to meet the global moral challenges we face today, problems such as gun violence, climate change, and the Zika virus. Drawing primarily on the work of Willis Jenkins, I argue that conscience has not yet caught up to the scale and interconnectedness of our global moral challenges. A truly “engaged conscience” must be focused not primarily on the self but on (...) the other, and must be active. I conclude by turning to Elisabeth Vasko’s criticisms of the victim/perpetrator binary to suggest that conscience must call us to greater responsibility for the systemic injustices in which particular moral challenges are embedded. (shrink)

Pharmacists with religious or ethical objections to prescribing emergency contraception won the latest round in the fight over conscience clauses in a case that could have broader implications for attempts to restrict access to contraception. In Stormans, Inc. v. Selecky, a federal District Court in Washington State granted an injunction to block the enforcement of regulations that would have forbidden pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception on the grounds of religious or ethical objections. In its decision, the court applied (...) Supreme Court abortion precedent without explicitly ruling whether emergency contraception should be legally categorized as a form of abortion or as contraception. However, the legal status of emergency contraception affects the strength of the defendants’ claims that the law was justified on the grounds of preventing sex discrimination. In neglecting to rule one way or the other, the court not only failed to adequately consider the sex discrimination claim but also may have opened the door to more restrictive regulation on contraceptives generally. (shrink)