Does perceptual consciousness require cognitive access? Ned Block argues that it does not. Central to his case are visual memory experiments that employ post-stimulus cueing—in particular, Sperling's classic partial report studies, change-detection work by Lamme and colleagues, and a recent paper by Bronfman and colleagues that exploits our perception of ‘gist’ properties. We argue contra Block that these experiments do not support his claim. Our reinterpretations differ from previous critics' in challenging as well a longstanding and common view of visual (...) memory as involving declining capacity across a series of stores. We conclude by discussing the relation of probabilistic perceptual representations and phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Using agent‐based modelling, Harrington, Kleber, Reubold, Schiel & Stevens (2018) develop a unified model of sound change based on cognitive processing of human speech and theories of how social factors constrain the spread of change throughout a community. They conclude that many types of change result from how biases in the phonetic distribution of phonological categories are transmitted via accommodation processes between individuals in interaction.

Fiona Macpherson (2012) argues that various experimental results provide strong evidence in favor of the cognitive penetration of perceptual color experience. Moreover, she proposes a mechanism for how such cognitive penetration occurs. We argue, first, that the results on which Macpherson relies do not provide strong grounds for her claim of cognitive penetrability; and, second, that, if the results do reflect cognitive penetrability, then time-course considerations raise worries for her proposed mechanism. We base our arguments in part on several of (...) our own experiments, reported herein. (shrink)

A reply to commentators -- Jake Beck, Nico Orlandi and Aaron Franklin, and Ian Phillips -- on our paper "Does perceptual consciousness overflow cognitive access?".

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models like ChatGPT, presents new challenges as well as possibilities for scientific authorship. This paper draws on social systems theory to offer a nuanced understanding of the interplay between technology, individuals, society and scholarly authorial practices. This contrasts with orthodoxy, where individuals and technology are treated as essentialized entities. This approach offers a critique of the binary positions of sociotechnological determinism and accelerationist instrumentality while still acknowledging that generative AI presents (...) profound challenges to existing practices and meaning making in scientific scholarship. This holistic treatment of authorship, integrity, and technology involves comprehending the historical and evolutionary entanglement of scientific individuality, scientific practices, and meaning making with technological innovation. This addresses current needs for more robust theoretical approaches to address the challenges confronted by academicians, institutions, peer review, and publication processes. Our analysis aims to contribute to a more sophisticated discourse on the ethical and practical implications of AI in scientific research. (shrink)

This paper articulates a developmental model for how individuals relate to religious difference. We begin by reviewing scholarly work on multicultural competencies and initial research on religious diversity. To provide a framework for our model, we explore the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity and its relationship to research within the psychology of religion. The review closes by examining and critiquing a preliminary model of interreligious sensitivity. From this multi-faceted review, we propose a developmental model of interreligious competence and suggest key (...) psychological capacities that undergird the model. Two case studies ground the theory before we explore future directions for research. Throughout, we consider the philosophical issues of alterity that shape encounters with religious diversity. By developing this model of interreligious competence, this article aims to provide a framework to help psychologists and other human service professionals become more effective in their interactions across religious difference. (shrink)

Cesario claims that all bias research tells us is that people “end up using the information they have come to learn as being probabilistically accurate in their daily lives”. We expose Cesario's flawed assumptions about the relationship between accuracy and bias. Through statistical simulations and empirical work, we show that even probabilistically accurate responses are regularly accompanied by bias.

Nanotechnologies and nanoscience have generated an unprecedented global research and development race involving dozens of countries. The understanding of associated environmental, ethical, and societal implications lags far behind the science and technology. Consequently, it is critical to consider both what is known and what is unknown to offer a kernel that future work can be added to. The challenges presented by nanotechnologies are discussed. Some initial solutions such as self-regulation and borrowing techniques and tools from other fields are accompanied by (...) a call for further research. (shrink)

Physicians often struggle with ethical issues surrounding intervention in their relatives’ health care. Many editorials, letters, and surveys have been written on this topic, but there is no systematic review of its prevalence. An Ovid Medline search was conducted for articles in English, written between January 1950 and December 2010, using the key words family member, relatives, treatment, prescribing, physician, and ethics. The search identified 41 articles (editorials, letters, and surveys). Surveys were reviewed to explore demographics of these treating physicians (...) and reasons for and against intervention. Physicians often intervene directly or indirectly in the health care of relatives. The most common reasons were convenience, cost savings, and the perception of having greater knowledge or concern than colleagues. Lost objectivity, fear of misdiagnosis, and inability to provide complete care were the main considerations against intervention. The characteristics of treating doctors were nonspecific. Most surveys recommend against this practice except for emergencies or minor ailments. This review included only a few surveys with small sample size and only assessed scientific literature written in English after 1950. Survey data may be biased by physicians’ self-reporting. In conclusion, most doctors occasionally intervene in their relatives’ care. The decision to do so is determined by multiple factors. Physicians should treat only short-term or minor illnesses within their scope of practice. Future research should evaluate doctors’ attitudes toward their relatives, medical student feelings about treating family, and intervention frequencies of medical and nonmedical professionals. (shrink)

Although the role of fairness in tax compliance has been of increasing interest among the academic and professional tax communities, very little is known about the role of interactional fairness. Interactional fairness refers to the quality of the treatment provided to individuals from authority figures, such as tax authority representatives. We conduct an experiment using US taxpayers to examine the role of interactional fairness on tax compliance intentions, and how detection influences this relation. Taxpayers’ detection salience reflects their perceptions that (...) they will be audited by the tax authority. Using insights from conditional cooperation theory, we predict and find that detection moderates the relation between interactional fairness and tax compliance intentions, such that the effect of interactional fairness on tax compliance intentions diminishes with higher detection. We discuss the implications of our results for tax policy. (shrink)

Addressing fake news requires a multidisciplinary effort The rise of fake news highlights the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age. Concern over the problem is global. However, much remains unknown regarding the vulnerabilities of individuals, institutions, and society to manipulations by malicious actors. A new system of safeguards is needed. Below, we discuss extant social and computer science research regarding belief in fake news and the mechanisms by which it spreads. Fake news has a long (...) history, but we focus on unanswered scientific questions raised by the proliferation of its most recent, politically oriented incarnation. Beyond selected references in the text, suggested further reading can be found in the supplementary materials. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue that this examination and appreciation for the shift to abductive reasoning should be extended to the intersection of neuroscience and novel brain-computer interfaces too. This paper highlights the implications of applying abductive reasoning to personalized implantable neurotechnologies. Then, it explores whether abductive reasoning is sufficient to justify insurance coverage for devices absent widespread clinical trials, which are better applied to one-size-fits-all treatments. INTRODUCTION In contrast to the classic model of randomized-control trials, often with a large number of (...) subjects enrolled, precision medicine attempts to optimize therapeutic outcomes by focusing on the individual.[i] A recent publication highlights the strengths and weakness of both traditional evidence-based medicine and precision medicine.[ii] Plus, it outlines a tension in the shift from evidence-based medicine’s inductive reasoning style (the collection of data to postulate general theories) to precision medicine’s abductive reasoning style (the generation of an idea from the limited data available).[iii] The paper’s main example is the application of precision medicine for the treatment of cancer.[iv] I argue that this examination and appreciation for the shift to abductive reasoning should be extended to the intersection of neuroscience and novel brain-computer interfaces too. As the name suggests, brain-computer interfaces are a significant advancement in neurotechnology that directly connects someone’s brain to external or implanted devices.[v] Among the various kinds of brain-computer interfaces, adaptive deep brain stimulation devices require numerous personalized adjustments to their settings during the implantation and computation stages in order to provide adequate relief to patients with treatment-resistant disorders. What makes these devices unique is how adaptive deep brain stimulation integrates a sensory component to initiate the stimulation. While not commonly at the level of sophistication as self-supervising or generative large language models,[vi] they currently allow for a semi-autonomous form of neuromodulation. This paper highlights the implications of applying abductive reasoning to personalized implantable neurotechnologies. Then, it explores whether abductive reasoning is sufficient to justify insurance coverage for devices absent widespread clinical trials, which are better applied to one-size-fits-all treatments.[vii] ANALYSIS I. The State of Precision Medicine in Oncology and the Epistemological Shift While a thorough overview of precision medicine for the treatment of cancer is beyond the scope of this article, its practice can be roughly summarized as identifying clinically significant characteristics a patient possesses (e.g., genetic traits) to land on a specialized treatment option that, theoretically, should benefit the patient the most.[viii] However, in such a practice of stratification patients fall into smaller and smaller populations and the quality of evidence that can be applied to anyone outside these decreases in turn.[ix] As inductive logic helps to articulate, the greater the number of patients that respond to a particular therapy the higher the probability of its efficacy. By straying from this logical framework, precision medicine opens the treatment of cancer to more uncertainty about the validity of these approaches to the resulting disease subcategories.[x] Thus, while contemporary medical practices explicitly describe some treatments as “personalized”, they ought not be viewed as inherently better founded than other therapies.[xi] A relevant contemporary case of precision medicine out of Norway focuses on the care of a patient with cancer between the ventricles of the heart and esophagus, which had failed to respond to the standard regimen of therapies over four years.[xii] In a last-ditch effort, the patient elected to pay out-of-pocket for an experimental immunotherapy (nivolumab) at a private hospital. He experienced marked improvements and a reduction in the size of the tumor. Understandably, the patient tried to pursue further rounds of nivolumab at a public hospital. However, the hospital initially declined to pay for it given the “lack of evidence from randomised clinical trials for this drug relating to this [patient’s] condition.”[xiii] In rebuttal to this claim, the patient countered that he was actually similar to a subpopulation of patients who responded in “open‐label, single arm, phase 2 studies on another immune therapy drug” (pembrolizumab).[xiv] Given this interpretation of the prior studies and the patient’s response, further rounds of nivolumab were approved. Had the patient not had improvements in the tumor’s size following a round of nivolumab, then pembrolizumab’s prior empirical evidence in isolation would have been insufficient, inductively speaking, to justify his continued use of nivolumab.[xv] The case demonstrates a shift in reasoning from the traditional induction to abduction. The phenomenon of ‘cancer improvement’ is considered causally linked to nivolumab and its underlying physiological mechanisms.[xvi] However, “the weakness of abductions is that there may always be some other better, unknown explanation for an effect. The patient may for example belong to a special subgroup that spontaneously improves, or the change may be a placebo effect. This does not mean, however, that abductive inferences cannot be strong or reasonable, in the sense that they can make a conclusion probable.”[xvii] To demonstrate the limitations of relying on the abductive standard in isolation, commentators have pointed out that side effects in precision medicine are hard to rule out as being related to the initial intervention itself unless trends from a group of patients are taken into consideration.[xviii] As artificial intelligence (AI) assists the development of precision medicine for oncology, this uncertainty ought to be taken into consideration. The implementation of AI has been crucial to the development of precision medicine by providing a way to combine large patient datasets or a single patient with a large number of unique variables with machine learning to recommend matches based on statistics and probability of success upon which practitioners can base medical recommendations.[xix] The AI is usually not establishing a causal relationship[xx] – it is predicting. So, as AI bleeds into medical devices, like brain-computer interfaces, the same cautions about using abductive reasoning alone should be carried over. II. Responsive Neurostimulation, AI, and Personalized Medicine Like precision medicine in cancer treatment, computer-brain interface technology similarly focuses on the individual patient through personalized settings. In order to properly expose the intersection of AI, precision medicine, abductive reasoning, and implantable neurotechnologies, the descriptions of adaptive deep brain stimulation systems need to deepen.[xxi] As a broad summary of adaptive deep brain stimulation, to provide a patient with the therapeutic stimulation, a neural signal, typically referred to as a local field potential,[xxii] must first be detected and then interpreted by the device. The main adaptive deep brain stimulation device with premarket approval, the NeuroPace Responsive Neurostimulation system, is used to treat epilepsy by detecting and storing “programmer-defined phenomena.”[xxiii] Providers can optimize the detection settings of the device to align with the patient’s unique electrographic seizures as well as personalize the reacting stimulation’s parameters.[xxiv] The provider adjusts the technology based on trial and error. One day machine learning algorithms will be able to regularly aid this process in myriad ways, such as by identifying the specific stimulation settings a patient may respond to ahead of time based on their electrophysiological signatures.[xxv] Either way, with AI or programmers, adaptive neurostimulation technologies are individualized and therefore operate in line with precision medicine rather than standard treatments based on large clinical trials. Contemporary neurostimulation devices are not usually sophisticated enough to be prominent in AI discussions where the topics of neural networks, deep learning, generative models, and self-attention dominate the conversation. However, implantable high-density electrocorticography arrays (a much more sensitive version than adaptive deep brain stimulation systems use) have been used in combination with neural networks to help patients with neurologic deficits from a prior stroke “speak” through a virtual avatar.[xxvi] In some experimental situations, algorithms are optimizing stimulation parameters with increasing levels of independence.[xxvii] An example of neurostimulation that is analogous to the use of nivolumab in Norway surrounds a patient in the United States who was experiencing both treatment-resistant OCD and temporal lobe epilepsy.[xxviii]Given the refractory nature of her epilepsy, implantation of an adaptive deep brain stimulation system was indicated. As a form of experimental therapy, her treatment-resistant OCD was also indicated for the off-label use of an adaptive deep brain stimulation set-up. Another deep brain stimulation lead, other than the one implanted for epilepsy, was placed in the patient’s right nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum region given the correlation these nuclei had with OCD symptoms in prior research. Following this, the patient underwent “1) ambulatory, patient-initiated magnet-swipe storage of data during moments of obsessive thoughts; (2) lab-based, naturalistic provocation of OCD-related distress (naturalistic provocation task); and (3) lab-based, VR [virtual reality] provocation of OCD-related distress (VR provocation task).”[xxix] Such signals were used to identify when to deliver the therapeutic stimulation in order to counter the OCD symptoms. Thankfully, following the procedure and calibration the patient exhibited marked improvements in their OCD symptoms and recently shared her results publicly.[xxx] In both cases, there is a similar level of abductive justification for the efficacy of the delivered therapy. In the case study in which the patient was treated with adaptive deep brain stimulation, they at least had their neural activity tested in various settings to determine the optimum parameters for treatment to avoid them being based on guesswork. Additionally, the adaptive deep brain stimulation lead was already placed before the calibration trials were conducted, meaning that the patient had already taken on the bulk of the procedural risk before the efficacy could be determined. Such an efficacy test could have been replicated in the first patient’s cancer treatment, had it been biopsied and tested against the remaining immunotherapies in vitro. Yet, in the case of cancer with few options, one previous dose of a drug that appeared to work on the patient may justify further doses. However, as the Norwegian case presents, corroboration with known responses to a similar drug (from a clinical trial) could be helpful to validate the treatment strategy. (It should be noted that both patients were resigned to these last resort options regardless of the efficacy of treatment.) There are some elements of inductive logic seen with adaptive deep brain stimulation research in general. For example, abductively the focus could be that patient X’s stimulation parameters are different from patient Y’s and patient Z’s. In contrast, when grouped as subjects who obtained personalized stimulation, patients X, Y, and Z demonstrate an inductive aspect to this approach’s safety and/or efficacy. The OCD case holds plenty of abductive characteristics in line with precision medicine’s approach to treating cancer and as more individuals try the method, there will be additional data. With the gradual integration of AI into brain-computer interfaces in the name of efficacy, this reliance on abduction will continue, if not grow, over time. Moving forward, if a responsive deep brain stimulation treatment is novel and individualized (like the dose of nivolumab) and there is some other suggestion of efficacy (like clinical similarities to other patients in the literature), then it may justify insurance coverage for the investigative intervention, absent other unrelated reasons to deny it. III. Ethical Implications and Next Steps While AI’s use in oncology and neurology is not yet as prominent as its use in other fields (e.g., radiology), it appears to be on the horizon for both.[xxxi] AI can be found in both the functioning of the neurotechnologies as well as the implementation of precision medicine. The increasing use of AI may serve to further individualize both oncologic and neurological therapies. Given these implications and the handful of publications cited in this article, it is important to have a nuanced evaluation of how these treatments, which heavily rely on abductive justification, ought to be managed. The just use an abductive approach may be difficult as AI infused precision medicine is further pursued. At baseline, such technology relies on a level of advanced technology literacy among the general public and could exclude populations who lack access to basic technological infrastructure or know-how from participation.[xxxii] Even among nations with adequate infrastructure, as more patients seek out implantable neurotechnologies, which require robust healthcare resources, the market will favor patient populations that can afford this complex care.[xxxiii] If patients already have the means to pay for an initial dose/use of a precision medicine product out of pocket, should insurance providers be required to cover subsequent treatments?[xxxiv] That is, if a first dose of a cancer drug or a deep brain stimulator over its initial battery life is successful, patients may feel justified in having the costs of further treatments covered. The Norwegian patient’s experience implies there is a precedent for the idea that some public insurance companies ought to cover successful cancer therapies, however, insurance companies may not all see themselves as obligated to cover neurotechnologies that rely on personalized settings or that are based on precision/abductive research more than on clinical trials. CONCLUSION The fact that the cases outlined above rely on abductive style of reasoning implies that there may not be as strong a justification for coverage by insurance, as they are both experimental and individualized, when compared to the more traditional large clinical trials in which groups have the same or a standardized protocol (settings/doses). If a study is examining the efficacy of a treatment with a large cohort of patients or with different experimental groups/phases, insurance companies may conclude that the resulting symptom improvements are more likely to be coming from the devices themselves. A preference for inductive justification may take priority when ruling in favor of funding someone’s continued use of an implantable neurostimulator. There are further nuances to this discussion surrounding the classifications of these interventions as research versus clinical care that warrant future exploration, since such a distinction is more of a scale[xxxv] than binary and could have significant impacts on the “right-to-try” approach to experimental therapies in the United States.[xxxvi] Namely, given the inherent limitations of conducting large cohort trials for deep brain stimulation interventions on patients with neuropsychiatric disorders, surgically innovative frameworks that blend abductive and inductive methodologies, like with sham stimulation phases, have traditionally been used.[xxxvii] Similarly, for adaptive brain-computer interface systems, if there are no large clinical trials and instead only publications that demonstrate that something similar worked for someone else, then, in addition to the evidence that the first treatment/dose worked for the patient in question, the balance of reasoning would be valid and arguably justify insurance coverage. As precision approaches to neurotechnology become more common, frameworks for evaluating efficacy will be crucial both for insurance coverage and for clinical decision making. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This article was originally written as an assignment for Dr. Francis Shen’s “Bioethics & AI” course at Harvard’s Center for Bioethics. I would like to thank Dr. Shen for his comments as well as my colleagues in the Lázaro-Muñoz Lab for their feedback. - [i] Jonathan Kimmelman and Ian Tannock, “The Paradox of Precision Medicine,” Nature Reviews. Clinical Oncology 15, no. 6 (June 2018): 341–42, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41571-018-0016-0. [ii] Henrik Vogt and Bjørn Hofmann, “How Precision Medicine Changes Medical Epistemology: A Formative Case from Norway,” Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 28, no. 6 (December 2022): 1205–12, https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13649. [iii] David Barrett and Ahtisham Younas, “Induction, Deduction and Abduction,” Evidence-Based Nursing 27, no. 1 (January 1, 2024): 6–7, https://doi.org/10.1136/ebnurs-2023-103873. [iv] Vogt and Hofmann, “How Precision Medicine Changes Medical Epistemology,” 1208. [v] Wireko Andrew Awuah et al., “Bridging Minds and Machines: The Recent Advances of Brain-Computer Interfaces in Neurological and Neurosurgical Applications,” World Neurosurgery, May 22, 2024, S1878-8750(24)00867-2, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2024.05.104. [vi] Mark Riedl, “A Very Gentle Introduction to Large Language Models without the Hype,” Medium (blog), May 25, 2023, https://mark-riedl.medium.com/a-very-gentle-introduction-to-large-language-models-without-the-hype-5 f67941fa59e. [vii] David E. Burdette and Barbara E. Swartz, “Chapter 4 - Responsive Neurostimulation,” in Neurostimulation for Epilepsy, ed. Vikram R. Rao (Academic Press, 2023), 97–132, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-91702-5.00002-5. [viii] Kimmelman and Tannock, 2018. [ix] Kimmelman and Tannock, 2018. [x] Simon Lohse, “Mapping Uncertainty in Precision Medicine: A Systematic Scoping Review,” Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 29, no. 3 (April 2023): 554–64, https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13789. [xi] Kimmelman and Tannock, “The Paradox of Precision Medicine.” [xii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1206. [xiii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1206. [xiv] Vogt and Hofmann, 1206. [xv] Vogt and Hofmann, 1207. [xvi] Vogt and Hofmann, 1207. [xvii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1207. [xviii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1210. [xix] Mehar Sahu et al., “Chapter Three - Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Precision Medicine: A Paradigm Shift in Big Data Analysis,” in Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science, ed. David B. Teplow, vol. 190, 1 vols., Precision Medicine (Academic Press, 2022), 57–100, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pmbts.2022.03.002. [xx] Stefan Feuerriegel et al., “Causal Machine Learning for Predicting Treatment Outcomes,” Nature Medicine 30, no. 4 (April 2024): 958–68, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-02902-1. [xxi] Sunderland Baker et al., “Ethical Considerations in Closed Loop Deep Brain Stimulation,” Deep Brain Stimulation 3 (October 1, 2023): 8–15, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdbs.2023.11.001. [xxii] David Haslacher et al., “AI for Brain-Computer Interfaces,” 2024, 7, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.dnb.2024.02.003. [xxiii] Burdette and Swartz, “Chapter 4 - Responsive Neurostimulation,” 103–4; “Premarket Approval (PMA),” https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfpma/pma.cfm?id=P100026. [xxiv] Burdette and Swartz, “Chapter 4 - Responsive Neurostimulation,” 104. [xxv] Burdette and Swartz, 126. [xxvi] Sean L. Metzger et al., “A High-Performance Neuroprosthesis for Speech Decoding and Avatar Control,” Nature 620, no. 7976 (August 2023): 1037–46, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06443-4. [xxvii] Hao Fang and Yuxiao Yang, “Predictive Neuromodulation of Cingulo-Frontal Neural Dynamics in Major Depressive Disorder Using a Brain-Computer Interface System: A Simulation Study,” Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 17 (March 6, 2023), https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2023.1119685; Mahsa Malekmohammadi et al., “Kinematic Adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation for Resting Tremor in Parkinson’s Disease,” Movement Disorders 31, no. 3 (2016): 426–28, https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.26482. [xxviii] Young-Hoon Nho et al., “Responsive Deep Brain Stimulation Guided by Ventral Striatal Electrophysiology of Obsession Durably Ameliorates Compulsion,” Neuron 0, no. 0 (October 20, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2023.09.034. [xxix] Nho et al. [xxx] Nho et al.; Erik Robinson, “Brain Implant at OHSU Successfully Controls Both Seizures and OCD,” OHSU News, accessed March 3, 2024, https://news.ohsu.edu/2023/10/25/brain-implant-at-ohsu-successfully-controls-both-seizures-and-ocd. [xxxi] Awuah et al., “Bridging Minds and Machines”; Haslacher et al., “AI for Brain-Computer Interfaces.” [xxxii] Awuah et al., “Bridging Minds and Machines.” [xxxiii] Sara Green, Barbara Prainsack, and Maya Sabatello, “The Roots of (in)Equity in Precision Medicine: Gaps in the Discourse,” Personalized Medicine 21, no. 1 (January 2024): 5–9, https://doi.org/10.2217/pme-2023-0097. [xxxiv] Green, Prainsack, and Sabatello, 7. [xxxv] Robyn Bluhm and Kirstin Borgerson, “An Epistemic Argument for Research-Practice Integration in Medicine,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 43, no. 4 (July 9, 2018): 469–84, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhy009. [xxxvi] Vijay Mahant, “‘Right-to-Try’ Experimental Drugs: An Overview,” Journal of Translational Medicine 18 (June 23, 2020): 253, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-020-02427-4. [xxxvii] Michael S. Okun et al., “Deep Brain Stimulation in the Internal Capsule and Nucleus Accumbens Region: Responses Observed during Active and Sham Programming,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 78, no. 3 (March 1, 2007): 310–14, https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.2006.095315. (shrink)

In Distributed Like Bread: Hans Urs von Balthasar Speaks to Seminarians, Jonathan Ciraulo engages with the theological insights of Hans Urs von Balthasar, especially as they pertain to the priesthood and seminary formation. This work not only introduces readers to Balthasar's complex and nuanced understanding of the priestly vocation but also serves as a guide for those discerning or living out this calling. Through a detailed examination of Balthasar’s life and writings, Ciraulo uncovers the profound notion that the priesthood (...) is a mission, one in which God elects individuals to become instruments of divine grace despite and within their human limitations. (shrink)

In this article, I critique Jonathan Floyd’s method of normative behaviourism (NB): that we should measure political preference for a political system from levels of crime and insurrection. First, I distinguish between problems with the data and problems with the theory. I proceed to examine 6 groups who present a difficulty for NB and identify the common thread: NB abstracts the capacity of groups to commit crime and insurrection, and therefore, misreads them in the data as normative approval of (...) a political system. Next, I argue that this a problem, especially as that capacity is often caused by the conditions of the political structure such groups live within. This lack of capacity often means they are amongst the most vulnerable. Consequently, NB needs to be careful of overlooking corrective justice. Subsequently, I offer some simple amendments to NB, followed by two complementary approaches: ethnography and fictional narratives. (shrink)

This article is the lead piece in a special report that presents the results of a bioethical investigation into chimeric research, which involves the insertion of human cells into nonhuman animals and nonhuman animal embryos, including into their brains. Rapid scientific developments in this field may advance knowledge and could lead to new therapies for humans. They also reveal the conceptual, ethical, and procedural limitations of existing ethics guidance for human‐nonhuman chimeric research. Led by bioethics researchers working closely with an (...) interdisciplinary work group, the investigation focused on generating conceptual clarity and identifying improvements to governance approaches, with the goal of helping scholars, funders, scientists, institutional leaders, and oversight bodies (embryonic stem cell research oversight [ESCRO] committees and institutional animal care and use committees [IACUCs]) deliver principled and trustworthy oversight of this area of science. The article, which focuses on human‐nonhuman animal chimeric research that is stem cell based, identifies key ethical issues in and offers ten recommendations regarding the ethics and oversight of this research. Turning from bioethics’ previous focus on human‐centered questions about the ethics of “humanization” and this research's potential impact on concepts like human dignity, this article emphasizes the importance of nonhuman animal welfare concerns in chimeric research and argues for less‐siloed governance and oversight and more‐comprehensive public communication. (shrink)

Does national success with an emerging technology require ethical sacrifices? This question is considered through the simultaneous consideration of ethics, investment, and outcomes in the nine jurisdictions that are making the largest investments in nanotechnologies—an important emerging technology. It is found that while ethical environment has no notable effect on pure and applied research, a more positive ethical environment is associated with measures associated with invention and commercialization. In summary, a race-to-the-top supports invention and commercialization of emerging technologies. A critical (...) finding as it suggests that issues such as corruption and regulation could be critical in limiting the extraction of social and economic benefit from emerging technologies (like nanotechnologies). (shrink)

In contrast to Clarke and Beck's claim that that the approximate number system represents rational numbers, we argue for a more modest alternative: The ANS represents natural numbers, and there are separate, non-numeric processes that can be used to represent ratios across a wide range of domains, including natural numbers.

Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has defended a contrastivist analysis of knowledge. By appealing to his account, he has attempted to steer a path between skepticism and Moore-style antiskepticism: much like sensitivity theorists and contextualists, he offers significant concessions to, but ultimately rejects, both. In this essay I suggest that in fact Schaffer ends up succumbing to skepticism.

Moral educators are faced with a number of polarizing trends, both in the political divide between liberals and conservatives and in the ideological divide between moral reasoners and character educators. Recent empirical research in psychology and anthropology, as exemplified in the work of Jonathan Haidt, has indicated that both kinds of polarization may have an evolutionary foundation. Our contribution is to evaluate the philosophical implications of such findings, and to place them within the cultural history of moral education. We (...) also consider options in practical pedagogy for moral educators. (shrink)

This article is my author's response in a book symposium on my book Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy. I reply to criticisms raised by Otavio Bueno, Henry Jackman, and Jonathan Weinberg.

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

[Open access] In this book symposium the author takes up questions from phenomenology, hermeneutics, ethical theory, and intellectual history raised by a group of scholarly interlocutors from a range of backgrounds. In the course of engaging with these issues, he discusses, inter alia, McDowell’s realism, Jonathon Lear’s work on the end of a world, Michael Oakeshott’s view of selfhood, Heidegger’s conception of Jemeinigkeit, Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt, and Gadamer’s hermeneutic conception of truth.

Universal Human Rights brings new clarity to the important and highly contested concept of universal human rights. This collection of essays explores the foundations of universal human rights in four sections devoted to their nature, application, enforcement, and limits, concluding that shared rights help to constitute a universal human community, which supports local customs and separate state sovereignty. The eleven contributors to this volume demonstrate from their very different perspectives how human rights can help to bring moral order to an (...) otherwise divided world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:New Essays on the RationalistsSteven NadlerRocco J. Gennaro and Charles Huenemann, editors. New Essays on the Rationalists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xvii + 391. Cloth, $60.00.Here is yet another collection of essays on early modern philosophy. The focus this time is on the Seventeenth century, in particular "the rationalists." What this apparently involves is, as the old-fashioned classification has it, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. But there (...) is no overall theme to the essays, nothing uniting them besides the fact that almost all are devoted to those three thinkers and the fact that the volume was inspired by a summer seminar run by Jonathan Bennett.What the editors mean by "the rationalists" (besides the extensional definition) is [End Page 437] thinkers "united in the belief that the intellect and human reason are powerful tools in our ability to know about the ultimate nature of mind and matter." What is supposed to separate "the rationalists" from "the empiricists" is "a belief in the power of human reason" (xv). This is a fairly weak claim; and I, for one, am skeptical that such categories are truly useful (or even valid—one would be hard-pressed to find a single issue on which Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz all agree and on which those who are usually called "empiricists" unanimously dissent). In the light of so much important and creative work done over the last twenty years in seventeenth-century philosophy, it would have been nice to see a volume devoted to "the rationalists" include at least one sophisticated discussion of the legitimacy and grounds of such a label.The essays in this book are divided into three categories: Matter and Substance; Freedom and Necessity; and Mind and Consciousness. The contributors are a broad mix of scholars: some established and accomplished, others new and up-and-coming. The quality of the work is consistently high. There is a lot of detailed and careful work here, both in the attention to the historical texts and in philosophical analyses. However, not all of the essays are of great scope or interest; in fact, most are not. There is a definite tendency toward the small-scale (but not brevity): a concern with micro-problems (for example, the chapter by Clarence Bonnen and Daniel Flage, "Distinctness," is devoted to the question of what the "distinctness" of an idea is for Descartes) and an emphasis on theses and arguments (such as Geoffrey Gorham's examination of the "similarity condition" for causation in Descartes, "Causation and Similarity in Descartes,"). If there is indeed an "analytical" way of doing history of philosophy, that school is well represented here.And then there are a couple of essays that stand out by transcending this narrowness of focus. The chapters by Catherine Wilson ("The Illusory Nature of Leibniz's System") and Don Garrett ("Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism") are, without question, the boldest and most interesting of the collection. Wilson argues that, in the light of Leibniz's changing and inconsistent views on substance, there really is no metaphysical "system" in his philosophy. Garrett, in what is, to my mind, the best essay in the book (although I think I disagree with him), defends an account of teleology in Spinoza's metaphysics, and then compares Spinoza's views on teleology with those of Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz; he concludes that Spinoza not only accepted teleological explanations of particular phenomena, but did so more strongly than anyone else in the modern period. Experts will, of course, disagree with the claims made by Wilson and Garrett; that is what this game is all about. But it is truly refreshing to see scholars such as these taking on large-scale issues.It is worth noting that there is also a nice, indirect dialogue between two of the essays: Charles Huenemann's interesting account of a consistent necessitarianism in Spinoza ("The Necessity of Finite Modes and Geometrical Containment in Spinoza's Metaphysics,") and Edwin Curley and Gregory Walski's argument (in "Spinoza's Necessitarianism Reconsidered,") that, when it comes to the finite modes, Spinoza is not a strong or absolute necessitarian. What is truly unfortunate about the collection, however... (shrink)

Barbarism was by no means unique to the past 100 years, Jonathan Glover tells us, but ''it is still right that much of 20th-century history has been a very unpleasant surprise.'' This was the century of Passchendaele, Dresden, Nanking, Nagasaki and Rwanda; of the Final Solution, the gulag, the Great Leap Forward, Year Zero and ethnic cleansing -- names that stand for killings in the six and seven figures and for suffering beyond comprehension. The technological progress that inspired the (...) optimism of the Victorians turned out also to multiply the effects of old-fashioned evil and criminal stupidity. (shrink)

When it comes to contemporary philosophical problems, metaphysical idealism-or Berkeleyan immaterialism-is not taken seriously by most philosophers, not to mention the typical Christian layperson. This state of affairs deserves some attempt at rectification, since Idealism has considerable explanatory power as a metaphysical thesis and provides numerous practical and theoretical benefits. -/- Such thinkers as George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards believed that Idealism is especially amenable to a Christian perspective, both because it provides a plausible way of conceptualizing the world (...) from a theistic standpoint and because it effectively addresses skeptical challenges to the Christian faith. The contributors to this volume explore a variety of ways in which the case can be made for this claim, including potential solutions to philosophical problems related to the nature of time, the ontology of physical objects, the mind-body problem, and the nature of science. (shrink)