During the set-up phase of an international study of genetic influences on outcomes from sepsis, we aimed to characterise potential differences in ethics approval processes and outcomes in participating European countries. Between 2005 and 2007 of the FP6-funded international Genetics Of Sepsis and Septic Shock project, we asked national coordinators to complete a structured survey of research ethic committee approval structures and processes in their countries, and linked these data to outcomes. Survey findings were reconfirmed or modified in 2017. Eighteen (...) countries participated in the study, recruiting 2257 patients from 160 ICUs. National practices differed widely in terms of composition of RECs, procedures and duration of the ethics approval process. Eight countries used a single centralised process for approval, seven required approval by an ethics committee in each participating hospital, and three required both. Outcomes of the application process differed widely between countries because of differences in national legislation, and differed within countries because of interpretation of the ethics of conducting research in patients lacking capacity. The RECs in four countries had no lay representation. The median time from submission to final decision was 1.5 months; in nine approval was received within 1 month; six took over 6 months, and in one 24 months; had all countries been able to match the most efficient approvals processes, an additional 74 months of country or institution-level recruitment would have been available. In three countries, rejection of the application by some local RECs resulted in loss of centres; and one country rejected the application outright. The potential benefits of the single application portal offered by the European Clinical Trials Regulation will not be realised without harmonisation of research ethics committee practices as well as national legislation. (shrink)

We have a reason to use information which is available about such genes in our reproductive decision-making; (3) couples should selec.

According to what we call the Principle of Procreative Beneficence, couples who decide to have a child have a significant moral reason to select the child who, given his or her genetic endowment, can be expected to enjoy the most well-being. In the first part of this paper, we introduce PB, explain its content, grounds, and implications, and defend it against various objections. In the second part, we argue that PB is superior to competing principles of procreative selection such as (...) that of procreative autonomy. In the third part of the paper, we consider the relation between PB and disability. We develop a revisionary account of disability, in which disability is a species of instrumental badness that is context- and person-relative. Although PB instructs us to aim to reduce disability in future children whenever possible, it does not privilege the normal. What matters is not whether future children meet certain biological or statistical norms, but what level of well-being they can be expected to have. (shrink)

It may soon be possible to generate human organs inside of human-pig chimeras via a process called interspecies blastocyst complementation. This paper discusses what arguably the central ethical concern is raised by this potential source of transplantable organs: that farming human-pig chimeras for their organs risks perpetrating a serious moral wrong because the moral status of human-pig chimeras is uncertain, and potentially significant. Those who raise this concern usually take it to be unique to the creation of chimeric animals with (...) ‘humanised’ brains. In this paper, we show how that the same style of argument can be used to critique current uses of non-chimeric pigs in agriculture. This reveals an important tension between two common moral views: that farming human-pig chimeras for their organs is ethically concerning, and that farming non-chimeric pigs for food or research is ethically benign. At least one of these views stands in need of revision. (shrink)

According to the free energy principle all living systems aim to minimise free energy in their sensory exchanges with the environment. Processes of free energy minimisation are thus ubiquitous in the biological world. Indeed it has been argued that even plants engage in free energy minimisation. Not all living things however feel alive. How then did the feeling of being alive get started? In line with the arguments of the phenomenologists, I will claim that every feeling must be felt by (...) someone. It must have mineness built into it if it is to feel a particular way. The question I take up in this paper asks how mineness might have arisen out of processes of free energy minimisation, given that many systems that keep themselves alive lack mineness. The hypothesis I develop in this paper is that the life of an organism can be seen as an inferential process. Every living system embodies a probability distribution conditioned on a model of the sensory, physiological, and morphological states that are highly probably given the life it leads and the niche it inhabits. I argue for an ecological and enactive interpretation of free energy. I show how once the life of an organism reaches a certain level of complexity mineness emerges as an intrinsic part of the process of life itself. (shrink)

Neuroimaging studies of brain-damaged patients diagnosed as in the vegetative state suggest that the patients might be conscious. This might seem to raise no new ethical questions given that in related disputes both sides agree that evidence for consciousness gives strong reason to preserve life. We question this assumption. We clarify the widely held but obscure principle that consciousness is morally significant. It is hard to apply this principle to difficult cases given that philosophers of mind distinguish between a range (...) of notions of consciousness and that is unclear which of these is assumed by the principle. We suggest that the morally relevant notion is that of phenomenal consciousness and then use our analysis to interpret cases of brain damage. We argue that enjoyment of consciousness might actually give stronger moral reasons not to preserve a patient's life and, indeed, that these might be stronger when patients retain significant cognitive function. (shrink)

AI researchers have developed sophisticated language models capable of generating paragraphs of 'synthetic text' on topics specified by the user. While AI text generation has legitimate benefits, it could also be misused, potentially to grave effect. For example, AI text generators could be used to automate the production of convincing fake news, or to inundate social media platforms with machine-generated disinformation. This paper argues that AI text generators should be conceptualised as a dual-use technology, outlines some relevant lessons from earlier (...) debates on dual-use life sciences research, and calls for closer collaboration between ethicists and the machine learning community to address AI language models’ dual-use implications. (shrink)

Cognition has traditionally been understood in terms of internal mental representations, and computational operations carried out on internal mental representations. Radical approaches propose to reconceive cognition in terms of agent-environment dynamics. An outstanding challenge for such a philosophical project is how to scale-up from perception and action to cases of what is typically called ‘higher-order’ cognition such as linguistic thought, the case we focus on in this paper. Perception and action are naturally described in terms of agent-environment dynamics, but can (...) a person’s thoughts about absent, abstract or counterfactual states of affairs also be accounted for in such terms? We argue such a question will seem pressing so long as one fails to appreciate how richly resourceful the human ecological niche is in terms of the affordances it provides. The explanatory work that is supposedly done by mental representations in a philosophical analysis of cognition, can instead be done by looking outside of the head to the environment structured by sociomaterial practices, and the affordances it makes available. Once one recognizes how much of the human ecological niche has become structured by activities of talking and writing, this should take away at least some of the motivation for understanding linguistic thinking in terms of content-bearing internal representations. We’ll argue that people can think about absent, abstract or counterfactual because of their skills for engaging with what we will call “enlanguaged affordances”. We make use of the phenomenological analysis of speech in Merleau-Ponty to show how the multiple affordances an individual is ready to engage with in a particular situation will typically include enlanguaged affordances. (shrink)

This book, the first comprehensive study in English of Heidegger's philosophy of art, starts in the mid-1930s with Heidegger's discussion of the Greek temple and his Hegelian declaration that a great artwork gathers together an entire culture in affirmative celebration of its foundational 'truth', and that, by this criterion, art in modernity is 'dead'. His subsequent work on Hölderlin, whom he later identified as the decisive influence on his mature philosophy, led him into a passionate engagement with the art of (...) Rilke, Ce;zanne, Klee and Zen Buddhism, liberating him not only from the overly restrictive conception of art of the mid-1930s but also from the disastrous politics of the period. Drawing on material hitherto unknown in the anglophone world, Young establishes a new account of Heidegger's philosophy of art and shows that his famous essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art' is its beginning, not its end. (shrink)

All univocal analyses of causation face counterexamples. An attractive response to this situation is to become a pluralist about causal relationships. "Causal pluralism" is itself, however, a pluralistic notion. In this article, I argue in favor of pluralism about concepts of cause in the social sciences. The article will show that evidence for, inference from, and the purpose of causal claims are very closely linked. Key Words: causation • pluralism • evidence • methodology.

Chapter 1 Idealism § 1 Introduction Schopenhauer says that his philosophy grows out of Kant's, as from its "parent stem" (WR I p.501). ...

We offer an argument for the extended mind based on considerations from brain development. We argue that our brains develop to function in partnership with cognitive resources located in our external environments. Through our cultural upbringing we are trained to use artefacts in problem solving that become factored into the cognitive routines our brains support. Our brains literally grow to work in close partnership with resources we regularly and reliably interact with. We take this argument to be in line with (...) complementarity or “second-wave” defences of the extended mind that stress the functional differences between biological elements and external, environmental resources in putative cases of extended cognition. Complementarity defences argue that many of the kinds of cognition humans excel at can only be accomplished by brains working together with a body that directly manipulates and acts on the world [Rowlands (1999); Menary (2007); Sutton (2010)]. We argue that complementarity and functionalist defences of the extended mind aren’t opposed, but that complementarity considerations can provide much needed and hitherto under exploited leverage in defending EMT. Moreover, the developmental work we will describe adds extra weight to the complementarity case for EMT. (shrink)

In his famous paper, Julian Huxley gives the outline of what he believes future humanity could – and should – look like. By pointing out the numerous limitations and feebleness the human nature is – at the time – prone to, and by confronting them with the possibilities humankind has, Huxley expresses the need to research and put into use all possible measures that would enable man achieve utmost perfection.

The recent tragic and widely publicised death of Jesse Gelsinger in a gene therapy trial has many important lessons for those engaged in the ethical review of research. One of the most important lessons is that ethics committees can give too much weight to ensuring informed consent and not enough attention to minimising the harm associated with participation in research. The first responsibility of ethics committees should be to ensure that the expected harm associated with participation is reasonable. Jesse was (...) an 18-year-old man with a mild form of ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency, a disorder of nitrogen metabolism. His form of the disease could be controlled by diet and drug treatment. On September 13 1999 a team of researchers lead by James Wilson at the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Human Gene Therapy (IHGT) injected 3.8 X 1013 adenovirus vector particles containing a gene to correct the genetic defect. He was the eighteenth and final patient in the trial. The virus particles were injected directly into the liver. He received the largest number of virus particles in a gene therapy trial.1 Four days later he was dead from what was probably an immune reaction to the virus vector. This was the first death directly attributed to gene therapy. It resulted in worldwide publicity, an independent investigation, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) suspending all trials at the IHGT, an FDA, and a senate subcommittee investigation. At a special public meeting at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in December 1999, James Wilson, also the director of the IHGT, said they still did not understand fully what had gone wrong.2 Even though a massive dose had been used, only 1% of transferred genes reached the target cells. (None of the patients in the trial showed significant gene expression. Art …. (shrink)

A common strategy in bioethics is to posit a prima facie case in favour of one policy, and to then claim that the burden of proof falls on those with opposing views. If the burden of proof is not met, it is claimed, then the policy in question should be accepted. This article illustrates, and critically evaluates, examples of this strategy in debates about the sale of organs by living donors, human enhancement, and the precautionary principle. We highlight general problems (...) with this style of argument, and particular problems with its use in specific cases. We conclude that the burden ultimately falls on decision-makers to choose the policy supported by the best reasons. (shrink)

In this paper I consider, in connection with dementia, two views of the person. One view of the person is derived from Locke and Parfit. This tends to regard the person solely in terms of psychological states and his/her connections. The second view of the person is derived from a variety of thinkers. I have called it the situated-embodied-agent view of the person. This view, I suggest, more readily squares with the reality of clinical experience. It regards the person as (...) embedded in a history and culture. The human person is also an embodied agent. I contend that this view encourages a more appropriate approach towards the ethical issues that arise in dementia and towards people with dementia. (shrink)

Genomic sequencing technologies (GS) pose novel challenges not seen in older genetic technologies, making traditional standards for fully informed consent difficult or impossible to meet. This is due to factors including the complexity of the test and the broad range of results it may identify. Meaningful informed consent is even more challenging to secure in contexts involving significant time constraints and emotional distress, such as when rapid genomic testing (RGS) is performed in neonatal intensive care units. In this article, we (...) propose that informed consent matters not for its own sake, but because obtaining it furthers a range of morally important goals, such as promoting autonomy, well‐being, and trust in medicine. These goals form the basis of a new framework [PROmoting Morally Important Consent Ends (PROMICE)] for assessing the ethical appropriateness of various informed consent models. We illustrate this framework with two examples: (a) a tiered and layered consent model for obtaining consent for GS, and (b) consent for RGS in critically ill newborns. We conclude that appropriately—rather than fully—informed consent provides the correct standard for genomic medicine and research. (shrink)

Are hierarchical arrangements in the workplace, including the employer-employee relationship, consistent with the ideal of relating to one another as moral equals? With this question at its core, this volume of essays by leading moral and political philosophers explores ideas about justice in the workplace, contributing to both political philosophy and business ethics. Relational egalitarians propose that the ideal of equality is primarily an ideal of social relationships and view the equality of social relationships as having priority over the distributive (...) arrangements. Yet contemporary workplaces are characterized by hierarchical employer-employee relationships. The essays push discussions of the relational egalitarian tradition in new directions, helping to show its promise and its limits. They address pressing concerns at a time of widening inequality and rapid changes in the nature of work. (shrink)

According to recent empirical research (Transparency International, 2013), nearly 15% of people worldwide admitted to having paid a bribe in an educational setting. Given the nature of corruption,...

An innovative program recently initiated at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center allows people to donate a kidney in exchange for a voucher that a loved one can redeem for a kidney if and when needed. As a relatively new practice, the ethical implications of advanced kidney donation have not yet been widely discussed. This paper reflects on some of the bioethical issues at stake in this new donation program, as well as some broader philosophical issues related to (...) the meaning and moral salience of commodification. I first consider whether the literature on commercial markets in organs––a longstanding topic of bioethical debate––can meaningfully inform ethical analysis of kidney voucher programs. Specifically, I consider whether and to what extent common objections to the exchange of kidneys for cash also apply to the exchange of kidneys for “kidney vouchers.” Second, I argue that the contrast between the ethical issues raised by these two practices highlights the need to understand commodification as existing on a continuum, with different degrees of commodification giving rise to different ethical issues. Doing so can help sharpen our understanding of commodification as a moral concept, as well as its relevance to broader debates about the moral limits of markets. (shrink)

Greely’s target article outlines six categories of ethical issues associated with human brain surrogate research. Some of these issues are familiar from other research contexts; others, less...

Corruption in higher education has raised concern among governments, citizens, and the education community worldwide. However, few papers have sought to explore the students’ willingness to engage in corrupt practices at the university level. The present study aimed to examine the influence of different corrupt behaviours and perceived corruption among peers on the corrupt intention of university students. 120 undergraduate students participated in a quasi-experimental design divided in 3 treatments to rate their willingness to engage in favouritism and embezzlement behaviours. (...) Results pointed out that students were more prone to committing a non-monetary behaviour favouritism– than a monetary behaviour –embezzlement–. Furthermore, there were not significant differences between the groups of control and high-corruption acceptance; while only the group of low-corruption acceptance showed significant lower rates when compared to the control and the high-corruption acceptance’s group. Practical recommendations need to address students’ perceptions of different corrupt practices, focusing on designing ethical training programmes aimed to raise awareness on the negative consequences of non-monetary activities. Future research directions could generate empirical support to prove if students are able to recognize the underlying mechanisms of subtle corrupt practices. (shrink)

There is a plurality of good reasons for action. An adequate theory of practical rationality has to be compatible with it even if it requires certain modifications of our everyday practices of reasoning. Usual theories of practical rationality do not pass this test. It is envisaged how to revise adequately our understanding of practical rationality.

Discrimination is typically understood to be a comparative phenomenon: S is discriminated against on the basis of trait T if she would not have been treated in the same way if she did not possess T. But the comparative test for discrimination may hide from view some important cases: associational discrimination and stereotype policing. These cases show more clearly what is true of discrimination in general: that it involves a vicarious wrong, that is, an action which wrongs someone other than (...) the primary object of disregard. This suggests why philosophers disagree whether discrimination is wrong because it causes harm or because it expresses disrespect. Paradigmatic cases of discrimination involve both harm and disrespect, but direct the harm and the disrespect towards different targets by treating the harmed individual as a mere representative of the targeted group. Discrimination is dehumanizing, and morally distinctive, precisely because of this fact. (shrink)

The idea that humans are by nature social and political animals can be traced back to Aristotle. More recently, it has also generated great interest and controversy in related disciplines such as anthropology, biology, psychology, neuroscience and even economics. What is it about humans that enabled them to construct a social reality of unrivalled complexity? Is there something distinctive about the human mind that explains how social lives are organised around conventions, norms, and institutions? The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of (...) the Social Mind is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. An international team of contributors present perspectives from diverse areas of research in philosophy, drawing on comparative and developmental psychology, evolutionary anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioural economics. The thirty-two original chapters are divided into five parts: _The Evolution of Social Mind_: including the social intelligence hypothesis, co- evolution of culture and cognition, ethnic cognition, cooperation; _Developmental and Comparative Perspectives_: including primate and infant understanding of mind, shared intentionality, and moral cognition; _Mechanisms of the Moral Mind:_ including norm compliance, social emotion, and implicit attitudes; _Naturalistic Approaches to Shared and Collective Intentionality_: including joint action, team reasoning and group thinking, and social kinds; _Social Forms of Selfhood and Mindedness_: including moral identity, empathy and shared emotion, normativity and intentionality. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, _The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind _is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics and sociology. (shrink)

”Der ökonomische Markt ist nicht moralfrei“, sagt der angesehene Philosoph Julian Nida-Rümelin und präsentiert sein Modell einer humanen Ökonomie. Er glaubt an eine gut funktionierende Wirtschaftsordnung, die menschengerecht und nachhaltig ausgerichtet ist. Dabei sieht er darin keineswegs eine Utopie, sondern vielmehr eine praktikable Form, die unseren Alltag positiv verändern kann. Dieses Buch richtet sich an diejenigen, die über den Tag hinausdenken wollen, die über die Kritik an dem einen oder anderen gravierenden Fehlverhalten ökonomischer Akteure hinaus eine ethische Perspektive gewinnen (...) wollen, die sich Gedanken machen, wie eine auf Kooperation und moralischen Werten basierende Wirtschaftsordnung in der Weltgesellschaft aussehen könnte. (shrink)

Delivering healthcare to undocumented migrants presents a complex challenge for healthcare providers. Integrating advocacy efforts into their daily practices can be ambiguous in practical terms, stemming from the intricate task of addressing the health needs of this population while simultaneously advocating for their health rights within the constraints imposed on them. This study seeks to consolidate findings from literature regarding the advocacy approaches employed by healthcare providers and the correlated ethical challenges. We conducted a scoping review of qualitative literature by (...) systematically searching four databases—PubMed/Medline, Embase, Cinahl, and Cochrane Library. For developing our search strategy, we employed the PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) scheme. Our analysis followed the qualitative content analysis approach proposed by Graneheim and Lundman. 30 studies were included, revealing a cumulative total of 915 healthcare providers who were interviewed. A total of 30 themes emerged comprising 14 advocacy approaches and 16 ethical challenges. Healthcare providers made a deliberate choice to engage in advocacy, responding to injustices experienced by undocumented migrants. The spectrum of advocacy initiatives varied, encompassing voluntary participation in healthcare provision, empathetic understanding, and healthcare-focused strategies. We also identified numerous correlated ethical challenges, necessitating healthcare providers to strike a balance between their eagerness to assist and their professional competence, respect the autonomy of undocumented migrants, and establish trust with them. These findings not only offer practical guidance for healthcare providers to enhance accessibility to healthcare services for undocumented migrant patients but also foster awareness of the ethical challenges that may arise in their advocacy roles. (shrink)

A crucially important part of the biosphere – the virosphere – is too often overlooked. Inclusion of the virosphere into the global picture of protein structure space reveals that 63 protein domain superfamilies in viruses do not have any structural and evolutionary relatives in modern cellular organisms. More than half of these have functions which are not virus‐specific and thus might be a source of new folds and functions for cellular life. The number of viruses on the planet exceeds that (...) of cells by an order of magnitude and viruses evolve up to six orders of magnitude faster. As a result, cellular species are subject to a constitutive ‘flow‐through’ of new viral genetic material. Due to this and the relaxed evolutionary constraints in viruses, the transfer of domains between host‐to‐virus could be a mechanism for accelerated protein evolution. The virosphere could be an engine for the genesis of protein structures, and may even have been so before the last universal common ancestor of cellular life. (shrink)

The notion of objectivity in science has come under critique of feminist writers. The scientific ideal of a detached, neutral observer, who has no race, no gender, no cultural identity, no class, and views the world “from nowhere,” has been challenged, and patterns of domination explored. Feminists argue that objectivity is a tacit generalization from the subjectivity of a small, privileged social group “of educated, usually prosperous, white men.” Hence, it is a result of the denial of the subjectivity of (...) women and other marginalized people. The task which I set before myself is to inquire into the problem of objectivity in science and to explore the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. I argue that, although the feminists’ critique of objectivity contributes to a greater awareness of the problem of objectivity in science and indeed subjectivity matters, their critique is ill founded. It is an example of one of many stereotypes and simplifications that we can find in today’s feminist thought. The affective engagement with the world, the approach that I propose, leads us to knowledge beyond objectivity. It is a prerequisite of knowing persons as persons and things as they are. (shrink)

The notion of “event” is often used, in contemporary philosophy, as a way to overcome the end of metaphysics since it challenges both the metaphysical conditions of appearing and knowing. Thanks to a comparative analysis of the works of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Luc Marion, the authors show that even though the event appears as a questioning of the modern concept of history in the texts of the former, and as a modality of saturated phenomena in the Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, (...) its use allows us to re-evaluate the relationship of both philosophers with metaphysics. After pointing out a fundamental difference of the conception of the event in Arendt and Marion, it is then possible to reveal their position regarding the possibility of thinking after the end of metaphysics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Autonomy, Well-Being, Disease, and DisabilityJulian Savulescu (bio)Keywordsautonomy, well-being, mental disorder, psychiatric disease, disability, welfare, body integrity identity disorderVarelius seeks to redefine what constitutes mental disorder or mental illness. (I use these terms interchangeably.) "According to this account, 'a person is mentally disordered when her psychological capacity for autonomy is diminished as compared with that of a typical member of our species of her age-group" (Varelius 2009). This is a (...) stimulating and important paper. Varelius describes fruitfully the relationship between mental illness and autonomy, specifically the ways in which mental disorder can undermine autonomy. This is valuable in understanding the impact of mental illness on the lives of people who suffer from it, which is a serious issue in practical ethics. But is it what constitutes mental disorder or illness? There are logical, conceptual reasons why we should not redefine mental illness in this way.Incomplete Account of Mental DisorderThere are a family of related concepts: disease, injury, disorder, illness, disability. There are old and entrenched disputes about how we should define these concepts. Varelius' paper is a contribution to the definition of mental disorder and illness.The primary classificatory category that defines medical practice is that of health and disease. Disease, broadly construed, involves the presence of pathology. Pathology can result from processes primarily or predominantly internal to the organism, such as genetic disease (although external factors affect their expression), or from processes primarily or predominantly external to the organism, such as injuries.The concepts of disorder and illness relate to the concept of disease. Disorder could be defined in terms of the functional effect of pathology. Illness could be defined in terms of the experiential impact of disease.1 How these terms are precisely defined and related need not concern us at the present. What matters is that the primary category is disease.Psychiatry has evolved in its use of terminology. What used to be called psychiatric diseases are now often called mental disorders. I now claim, for the purposes of illustration of the argument (though it does not require this claim), that the dominant category is disease. Indeed, what are called mental disorders appear in the International Classification of Diseases.Disease can be divided into the mental and physical. I believe that the mental will one day be [End Page 59] shown to be shown to be entirely a subset of the physical. That is, that brain pathology will be a cause, if not the only cause, of mental disease. But others may believe the sets of mental and physical disease are intersecting but not coextensive.What matters is that mental disease is a subcategory of the more general category of disease. It must have the same definitional features as "disease" plus some extra ones specific to the "mental," or mind. (The same points apply if you use "disorder" as the dominant category rather than "disease.")One problem for Varelius is this: how does this autonomy account of "mental disease" relate to an account of "physical disease," and "disease" in general? If mental disease is defined in terms of its impact on the psychological capacities necessary for autonomy, how is "disease" in general, or physical disease, to be defined? One obvious response is to define these related concepts in a similar way:Disease: "a person is diseased when her capacity for autonomy is diminished as compared to that of a typical member of our species of her age-group." Physical disease: "a person is physically disordered when her physical capacity for autonomy is diminished as compared to that of a typical member of our species of her age-group."This interpretation is suggested by the following passage from Varelius:As contrasted with the actual condition of being autonomous, as a capacity of an individual autonomy means that a person has the psychological and bodily abilities that being autonomous... requires.(2009)It would be radical to define disease in general in terms of capacity for autonomy. There is no doubt that disease affects our autonomy, and that is morally significant, but these seem clearly separable concepts. Varelius could respond that he is not defining mental disease but rather the mental component... (shrink)

Advances in brain–brain interface technologies raise the possibility that two or more individuals could directly link their minds, sharing thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences. This paper explores conceptual and ethical issues posed by such mind-merging technologies in the context of clinical neuroethics. Using hypothetical examples along a spectrum from loosely connected pairs to fully merged minds, the authors sketch out a range of factors relevant to identifying the degree of a merger. They then consider potential new harms like loss of (...) identity, psychological domination, loss of mental privacy, and challenges for notions of autonomy and patient benefit when applied to merged minds. While radical technologies may seem to necessitate new ethical paradigms, the authors suggest the individual-focus underpinning clinical ethics can largely accommodate varying degrees of mind mergers so long as individual patient interests remain identifiable. However, advanced decisionmaking and directives may have limitations in addressing the dilemmas posed. Overall, mind-merging possibilities amplify existing challenges around loss of identity, relating to others, autonomy, privacy, and the delineation of patient interests. This paper lays the groundwork for developing resources to address the novel issues raised, while suggesting the technologies reveal continuity with current healthcare ethics tensions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 1 Seiten: 4-13.

After offering a brief account of how we understand the shared circuits model (SCM), we divide our response into four sections. First, in section R1, we assess to what extent SCM is committed to an account of the ontogeny and phylogeny of shared circuits. In section R2, we examine doubts raised by several commentators as to whether SCM might be expanded so as to accommodate the mirroring of emotions, sensations, and intransitive actions more generally. Section R3 responds to various criticisms (...) that relate to the account of social-learning Hurley proposes in the target article. We conclude in section R4 by responding to a number of commentators who argued for the limitation of control theory as a framework for studying social cognition. (shrink)