It was no accident that the first neuroscience community, the Neurosciences Research Program (NRP), took shape in the 1960s at MIT, the birthplace of cybernetics. Francis O. Schmitt, known as the founding father of the NRP, was a famous biologist and an avid reader of cybernetics. Focusing on the intellectual and institutional context that Schmitt was situated in, this article unveils the way that the brain was conceptualized as a distinct object, requiring the launch of a new (...) research community in the US. In doing so, this article moves beyond the dominant narratives on the triumph of molecularization of the brain at the beginning of neuroscience. Instead, it argues that what brought researchers together in the name of neuroscience was not just a molecule but an aspiration to develop biological theories of the brain/mind, which resonated with biologists in a postwar context and was materialized through support for basic research. The article highlights the tension over the computerization and molecularization of the brain, which shaped the interdisciplinary gathering of neuroscientists in the context of growing interest in basic research. Thereby, this article reveals the rise of theoretical concerns in brain science that reflect the distinct desires and concerns of biologists in the US at an intellectual and institutional level. By revisiting the launch of the NRP with a focus on Schmitt, the article sheds light on the historical contingencies in launching the new community as neuroscience in the US and their meaning for the locality and transiency of (inter)disciplinarity in brain science. (shrink)

One of the important aspects of recent aesthetics is its focus on cross-disciplinary approaches. This implies that, although claims to generality and objectivity continue to be made, no single practice, science, or approach is able to provide absolute evidential support for arguments and claims. Aesthetics as a critical enterprise, therefore, is open to a plurality of explanations. As a result, art becomes more than another object of scientific or philosophical inquiry. It becomes a model for philosophical practice that can complement (...) or compete with dominant scientific paradigms. However, such aesthetic practice must respond to at least two grounds for skepticism: that a turn to aesthetics involves withdrawal from either critical and rigorous thinking or from social action and life. By discussing three core themes relevant for recent debates across the fields of philosophy, art history/theory and art pratice we would like to show how these concerns, while serious, can be taken up by aesthetics. These themes are: 1. the issue of validity (motivated by inquiries into the peculiar validity of aesthetic judgments); 2. the issue of subjectivity (motivated by the stipulated ‘special link’ between aesthetics and the human subject); and the political dimension of aesthetics (highlighted by the political implications of pluralist approaches to aesthetics, such as the need for negotiation and appeal). (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A New Approach to the Natural Desire to See GodFrancis Bethel O.S.B.We read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God. … Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for" (§27). We seek the true and the good, and God is absolute Truth and (...) Goodness. Does this mean that the desire for truth and happiness is a direct ordering to God? How to understand this desire in relation to the supernatural desire for God?I propose in the following pages to explore the intellectual side of our aptitude for God around St. Thomas's theme of the natural desire to see him. We can situate the various views on this subject according to two main lines, both of which have their difficulties. One group holds that, since our faculties are innately ordered to their proportionate and therefore limited objects, they cannot also be ordered to the Beatific Vision of the infinite God. The other position affirms that, since creatures do not satisfy us, our spiritual faculties must somehow be innately directed to that Vision. In the first case one needs to counterbalance by showing how grace builds on nature, how the Vision fulfills our nature. In the second, one has to make clear how one can still preserve the distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders.1 [End Page 753]I will call the "elicited-desire position" the opinion that a direct order to the Vision arises only after one becomes aware of God's existence, and "natural-appetite position" the stand that intrinsic principles of our spiritual faculties are ordered to the Vision.2 St. Thomas did not use these terms [End Page 754] here and did not turn his attention especially toward that distinction; some therefore prefer not to resort to them for fear of obscuring St. Thomas's perspective. Nevertheless, I adopt them because that is where the question lies in the current debate.St. Thomas in fact would seem to have a foot on each side of the debate. In some texts, especially when arguing in favor of the Vision, he presents a deep, natural élan in that direction. In others, when he is manifesting that we need grace to enter the supernatural order, he explains that we can have no natural movement toward that order. So, as everyone remarks, we have a second problem: what exactly is the thought of the master, of the guide through whom we need to reflect on the natural desire?Why take up again this so embattled issue? For the good reason that any better glimpse of the beautiful mystery of man in his relation to God is fruitful for our spiritual life and contemplation, for philosophy and theology. To make headway, I think that we need to embrace the question more largely, take it up from its foundations by re-immersing it in St. Thomas's metaphysics. I differ from most others partly because I study the dynamism of the intellect, not the will. I disagree with the elicited-desire position, for I judge that the intellect innately surpasses its object toward God. I differ also from many who hold the natural-appetite position in that I do not conceive the intellectual appetite as oriented toward something supernatural; I do not consider God to be included in our natural intellect's object.In the first part, to manifest the need of a fresh approach, I will examine how well the two fundamental positions measure up to the Church's and St. Thomas's teachings on the relationship between nature and grace. We will see that St. Thomas teaches and the Church indicates that God is not the direct, formal object or term of a natural faculty and yet our intellect innately tends beyond its natural object toward God.In the second part, I will introduce new texts of St. Thomas that study in metaphysical terms the relation of our intellect to God. We will find that the fact that the intellect's object is being (ens)—in the sense of... (shrink)

_Rediscovering Aesthetics_ brings together prominent international voices from art history, philosophy, and artistic practice to discuss the current role of aesthetics within and across their disciplines. Following a period in which theories and histories of art, art criticism, and artistic practice seemed to focus exclusively on political, social, or empirical interpretations of art, aesthetics is being rediscovered both as a vital arena for discussion and a valid interpretive approach outside its traditional philosophical domain. This volume is distinctive, because it provides (...) a selection of significant but divergent positions. The diversity of the views presented here demonstrates that a critical rethinking of aesthetics can be undertaken in a variety of ways. The contributions open a transdisciplinary debate from which a new field of aesthetics may begin to emerge. Contributors include: Claire Bishop, Diarmuid Costello, Paul Crowther, Arthur Danto, Nicholas Davey, Thierry de Duve, James Elkins, Francis Halsall, Michael Ann Holly, Julia Jansen, Michael Kelly, Robert Morris, Tony O'Connor, Peter Osborne, Adrian Piper, David Raskin, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Shiff, Wolfgang Welsch, and Richard Woodfield. (shrink)

Research Ethics Boards (REBs) provide oversight for Canadians that research projects will comply with standards of ethics if the studies are carried out as described in the documents that have been approved. While REBs have traditionally been affiliated with institutions such as universities and hospitals, a number of factors - including the increased volume of research being conducted outside academic centres - have resulted in the establishment of some private or independent REBs. This, in turn, has raised concerns about the (...) credibility of REBs in the private sector and their capacity to handle issues around conflict of interest. This Breakout Session was an opportunity to hear the perspectives of people associated with institutional and private REBs and examine perceived problems with boards in the private sector, scrutinize theoretical and structural differences between types of REBs, and look at whether or not there is room for both institutional and private boards in the Canadian research review landscape. (shrink)

In opposition to Aristotle, for whom practical reason differs from theoretical reason solely in the end toward which it directs its theoretical knowledge, Kant means by practical reason the capacity to determine an act unconditionally, that is, freely. Since the Kantian doctrine of determinants is based on a conception of mutual relation between practical reason and volition, this study traces the development, progressive clarification, and precise result of his thought from the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten to the Metaphysik der (...) Sitten.... Identification of practical reason with the will in the notion of autonomy guides research on the objective determining ground.... The article investigates the source from which Kant derived his notion of a determining ground and the role which analogy to natural activity played in its development [abr, tr fr j by PCS]. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Universal Salvation, Damnation, and the Task of TheologySimon Francis Gaine O.P.The science of theology is rightly concerned with questions of the ultimate salvation and damnation of intellectual creatures, both angelic and human.1 Here I shall touch on the orthodoxy and theological correctness of two opposed views, which are current in Christian theology today, about the ultimate fate of human beings in the order God has created. One is (...) universalism, the idea that all human beings definitely will or may be finally united with God in heaven.2 According to stronger or weaker versions of universalism, hell will or may be empty. The other is sometimes known as "infernalism," by which I mean the view that there will be some human beings forever separated from God, even if we do not know who they will be. According to infernalism, thus defined, hell will definitely not be empty.Hans Urs von Balthasar is among those theologians who is counted as a universalist. However, he distanced himself from the idea that universal salvation is something we can believe by faith or know for certain. Balthasar supposed that an empty hell is something we can instead hope for, and so [End Page 879] embraced a weaker version of universalism.3 Three short works by him have been gathered in English translation under the title Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"?4 Among them is Balthasar's main defense of his position, Was dürfen wir hoffen?, which was first published in German in 1986.5 Though he acknowledges that we do not know for definite that universal salvation will take place, he treats it as something really possible. However, for "infernalists," as Balthasar dubs them, though we can certainly hope that any given individual will be admitted to heaven, we cannot hope for the salvation of the human race as a whole, because we are bound to believe that some will be lost, even though we may not know who they will be. This is because, on the infernalist account, the actual inhabitation of hell has been divinely revealed, such that universalism is outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, and so can hardly be true. From the first reactions to Balthasar's proposal, even before the publication of Was dürfen wir hoffen?, the revelation that some will be forever in hell has been presented as a refutation of Balthasar's hope, intimating that his universalism is heretical.6 Some critics have suggested that, while Balthasar was not setting out to oppose Church teaching, it is not possible to "accede to Balthasar's way of conceiving the possibility of eternal salvation and remain orthodox."7It seems to me, however, that both infernalism and a hope for universal salvation arguably lie within the current bounds of Catholic orthodoxy. I do not mean to say that both are correct. Evidently they cannot both be true. Either it is possible that hell will in fact be empty or it is not. Nevertheless, it seems to me that both views can be recognized as falling within the current bounds of orthodoxy. Consider how the claims of the classic Thomist and Molinist positions on the relationship between divine grace and human freedom cannot both be true in all their details, yet each falls within the [End Page 880] bounds of current Catholic orthodoxy and neither position can licitly call the other heretical, without prejudice to a future magisterial determination of the question.8 I suggest that, likewise, infernalism and universalism as understood by Balthasar both fall within the bounds of current Catholic orthodoxy, even if both cannot be correct. However, while the Catholic orthodoxy of infernalism, having been held within Catholicism over the centuries, is surely uncontested, that of universalism is strongly contested, especially on the alleged ground that infernalist teaching is revealed doctrine.Though universalism is certainly not a modern invention, it has become increasingly prominent in modern times. Since the Second Vatican Council, it has been embraced by a number of Catholic theologians.9 The extent of its contemporary support gives reason to ask whether it has become more or less positively recognized by the magisterium as an arguable theological... (shrink)

Examines the history and the consequences of living in the contemporary culture of forgetfulness.

Background: Caring for a partner with primary malignant brain tumour can be a dramatic life-changing event. Primary malignant brain tumour is known to give poor life expectancy and severe neurological and cognitive symptoms, such as changed behaviour and personality, which demand greater caring responsibilities from spouses. Aim: The aim of the study is to explore ethical dilemmas spouses experience in the everyday care of a partner in treatment for primary malignant brain tumour. Research design, participants and research context: A phenomenological (...) and hermeneutic qualitative descriptive design was adopted as a method for collecting and analysing data. Ten spouses were interviewed twice using an in-depth, semi-structured interview guide. The interviews took place at the spouses’ homes or at the hospital. Ethical consideration: Ethical matters were considered throughout the research process. Permission from The National Committee on Health Research Ethics and the Danish Data Protection Agency was obtained. Findings: The analysis showed that the spouses perceived daily ethical dilemmas in caring for a partner with primary malignant brain tumour. Their life as well as their partner’s life had changed considerably. The main theme that emerged therefore was ‘oscillating in a changing relationship’. This theme was further elaborated in three subthemes that in more detail demonstrated the dilemmas: ‘doing the right thing in unpredictable daily situations’; ‘torn between patience and guilt’; and ‘living in a time of uncertainty, hope and despair’. Conclusion: Caring for a partner with changed behaviour and personality due to primary malignant brain tumour may involve exhausting ethical caring dilemmas. Spouses’ married life may change to a semi-professional asymmetrical relationship, which is challenged by the oscillation between acting responsibly for their partners’ well-being and caring dilemmas with no answer for what the right thing to do is. Mixed feelings of right and wrong, patience and guilt, hope and despair seem to be spousal companions through their partners’ progressing illness. (shrink)

More than 50 years after the publication of the Harvard Committee Report that sought to define death according to whole-brain function criteria, this document continues to generate a diversity of o...

The beginning of the 21st century has seen the renewed use of aesthetics as a critical and interpretive method within various discursive spheres. Particularly, and unsurprisingly, this move has been most pronounced in the discursive systems of philosophy and the artworld. It is to this more specific re-discovery that the authors in this journal address their arguments.

Research Ethics Boards (REBs) provide oversight for Canadians that research projects will comply with standards of ethics if the studies are carried out as described in the documents that have been approved. While REBs have traditionally been affiliated with institutions such as universities and hospitals, a number of factors - including the increased volume of research being conducted outside academic centres - have resulted in the establishment of some private or independent REBs. This, in turn, has raised concerns about the (...) credibility of REBs in the private sector and their capacity to handle issues around conflict of interest. This Breakout Session was an opportunity to hear the perspectives of people associated with institutional and private REBs and examine perceived problems with boards in the private sector, scrutinize theoretical and structural differences between types of REBs, and look at whether or not there is room for both institutional and private boards in the Canadian research review landscape. (shrink)

COVID‐19, caused by a novel coronavirus named SARS‐CoV‐2, was identified in December 2019, in Wuhan, China. It was first confirmed in sub‐Saharan Africa in Nigeria on 27 February 2020 and has since spread quickly to all sub‐Saharan African countries, causing more than 111,309 confirmed cases and 2,498 deaths as of 03 June 2020. The lessons learned during the recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreaks in some sub‐Saharan African countries were expected to shape and influence the region’s responses to COVID‐19 pandemic. (...) However, some of the challenges associated with the management of the EVD outbreaks persist and create obstacles for the effective management of the COVID‐19 pandemic. This article describes the commonalities between the EVD epidemics and COVID‐19 pandemic, with a view to draw on lessons learned to effectively tackle the ongoing pandemic. Key successes, failures and lessons learned from previous EVD outbreaks are discussed. Recommendations on how these lessons can be translated to strengthen the COVID‐19 response in sub‐Saharan Africa are provided. (shrink)

We argue that developing a human ethics application is an effective method for refining the intent and design of research studies. Our study aimed to investigate the delivery of end-of-life and palliative care nursing to residents of an aged care unit in a Multi-purpose Service/centre in rural Victoria. We used the ethics application process as a strategy to focus the study, and to refine the data collection and analysis techniques. It is our contention that the process of completing the application (...) and gaining ethics approval is laborious; however, the intellectualising that occurs provides researchers with an opportunity to reflect upon and refine their studies, thus ensuring the ultimate success and timely completion of research investigations. (shrink)