Heath care and public health are typically conceptualized as separate, albeit overlapping, systems. Health care’s goal is the improvement of individual patient outcomes through the provision of medical services. In contrast, public health is devoted to improving health outcomes in the population as a whole through health promotion and disease prevention. Health care services receive the bulk of funding and political support, while public health is chronically starved of resources. In order to reduce morbidity and mortality, policymakers must shift their (...) attention to public health services and to the improved integration of health care and public health. In other words, health care and public health should be treated as two parts of a single integrated health system. Furthermore, in order to maximize improvements in health status, policymakers must consider the impact of all governmental policies on health. (shrink)

The ethical concept of justice, as it relates to the development and deployment of innovative health technologies, commands the fair and equitable distribution of burdens and benefits. In bioethics, specific guidance on practical strategies for achieving what this concept of justice demands are somewhat elusive. Drawing on issues of justice arising or likely to arise in the context of the search for a vaccine or cure for COVID‐19, this paper argues for a focus on the concept of “practical justice” in (...) post‐pandemic bioethics work. To illustrate the value and promise of this concept, the paper reflects on an approach to achieving practical justice in health biotechnology research that is grounded in a commitment to offer technical assistance to developing and under‐resourced nations. (shrink)

In this essay, I hope to make clearer what the points of division between the materialists and the sceptics are. I argue that the rifts are quite deep and turn on basic differences in understanding the scientific enterprise. In section I, I outline the disagreements between David Chalmers and me, arguing that consciousness is not a brute fact about the world. In section II, I point out the fundamental difference between the materialists and the sceptics, suggesting that this difference is (...) not something that further discussion or argumentation can overcome. In the final section, I outline one view of scientific explanation and conclude that the source of conflict really turns on a difference in the rules each side has adopted in playing the game. (shrink)

or Browse over 3500 reviews in " by Valerie Hardcastle, Ph.D. " _Metapsychology_.

Newly developed Bayesian perspectives on schizophrenia hold out the promise that a common underlying mechanism can account for many, if not all, of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. If this is the case, then understanding how schizophrenic minds go awry could shine light on how healthy minds maintain a sense of self. This article investigates this Bayesian promise by examining whether the approach can indeed account for the difficulties with self-awareness experienced in schizophrenia. While I conclude that it cannot, I (...) nonetheless maintain that understanding how the self breaks down in schizophrenia tells us much about how and why the self functions in normal human circumstances. I proceed first by recounting in some detail a Bayesian interpretation of perception, schizophrenia, and self-awareness, as well as some of the empirical data supporting this interpretation, then by exploring aspects of schizophrenia that this approach leaves out. I conclude by discussing what the “left out” aspects tell us about self-awareness, thereby convincing the reader that studying patients with schizophrenia is indeed a useful avenue for understanding awareness of self. (shrink)

I examine the branch of evolutionary epistemology which tries to account for the character of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans by extending the biological theory of evolution to the neurophysiological substrates of cognition. Like Plotkin, I construe this branch as a struggling science, and attempt to characterize the sort of theory one might expect to find this truly interdisciplinary endeavor, an endeavor which encompasses not only evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and developmental neuroscience, but also and especially, the computational modeling (...) of artificial life programming; I suggest that extending Schaffner''s notion of interlevel theories to include both horizontal and vertical levels of abstraction best fits the theories currently being developed in cognitive science. Finally, I support this claim with examples drawn from computational modeling data using the genetic algorithm. (shrink)

In this essay, I home in on the difficulties with group-to-individual (G2i) inferences in neuroscience and how they impact the legal system. I briefly outline how cognitive shortcutting can distort legal decisions, and then turn my attention to G2i inferences, with a special focus on issues of intellectual disability and brain damage. I argue that judges and juries are not situated to appreciate the nuances in brain data and that they are required to make clinical decisions without clinical training. As (...) a result, they effectively ignore those responsibilities and simply decide cases in virtue of what they already believe to be true. How judges actually make decisions in highstakes criminal cases is troubling, but they are also hamstrung in a variety of ways. (shrink)

What is required to be an interdisciplinary theory in cognitive science is for it to span more than one traditional domain. Generally speaking, as I discuss ...

It has been more than 20 years since the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. on the admissibility of scientific expert witness testimony in legal proceedings. It is time, perhaps, to look back at the history of Daubert decisions to determine whether it and its progeny have lived up to their collective promises to keep bad science out of the courtroom, while allowing in good, especially where the mind and brain sciences are concerned.In this (...) essay, I argue that, although the decision in Daubert describes a general test for the admissibility of scientific evidence, it has not been applied consistently to data and conclusions drawn from the behavioral sciences.... (shrink)

Given what we know about the segregated nature of the brain and the relative absence of multi-modal association areas in the cortex, how percepts become unified is not clear. However, if we could work out how and where the brain joins together segregated outputs, we would have a start in localizing the neuronal processes that correlate with conscious perceptual experiences. In this essay, I critically examine data relevant for understanding the neurophysiological underpinnings of perception. In particular, I examine the possibility (...) that 40 Hz. oscillatory firing patterns in cortex are important lower-level neuronal events related to perceptual experiences. I suggest that `binding' - understood as a process of hooking together disparate psychological units - reduces to a property inherent in the structure of our brain's firing patterns. However, this reduction may not reflect the firing rates of individual cells, but instead a `higher level' order superimposed on individual cells' activity. (shrink)

I examine what happens in the brain when patients experience chronic pain and when subjects are addicted to alcohol. We can find important parallels between these two cases, and these parallels can perhaps point us toward new ways of treating (or at least understanding) both issues. Interestingly, we can understand both cases as our pleasure system gone awry. In brief, I argue that chronic pain and alcohol addiction both stem from a dysregulation in our brain’s reward structure. This dysregulation in (...) what should be our pleasure circuitry pushes individuals to behave in ways counterproductive to their needs and to feel unpleasant things. In other words, there is likely both something quite right and perhaps quite wrong about how some philosophers are thinking about pain as an evaluative state. I shall be arguing that pain is both hedonic and evaluative, though perhaps not in the ways they are imagining. (shrink)

Spelling out in detail what we do and do not know about phenomenological experience, this book denies the common view of consciousness as a central decision...

Some theorists have argued that we should understand the notion of free will from a functional perspective: free will just is our ability to choose effectively and adaptively in an ever-changing environment. Although far from what many philosophers normally mean by free will, those who adopt this biological-evolutionary perspective can clearly define and defend a notion of personal responsibility. One consequenceof this point of view is that addicts become responsible for their actions, for at each choice point, there is a (...) real sense in which the addict could have elected not to use or abuse. As a result, it has been argued that addiction is not a disease, that addictive behavior is voluntary, and that sometimes it is even rational. This paper defends a different way of thinking about addiction, one that aligns it with other complex chronic illnesses. The perspective put forth here suggests that these discussions about responsibility and free will represent an over-simplified and neuropsychologically inaccurate portrait of basic human capacities for behavioral choice. (shrink)

On the one hand, consciousness seems to be utterly the wrong sort of phenomenon to capture in a scientific theory. On the other hand, theorizing about consciousness does not seem to be beyond the pale of science. This dissertation tries to resolve this dilemma of consciousness for the cognitive sciences by answering the three following questions: What are the appropriate properties of the mind and the brain to study in order to develop a theory of consciousness? What informational role does (...) consciousness play in our psychological life? How does the underlying neurophysiological structure of consciousness relate to higher-level information processing descriptions of consciousness? In discussing these issues, I defend the viability of the project against popular philosophical objections and then develop my own framework for approaching the scientific study of consciousness based on work in neurophysiology, developmental psychology, neurology, cognitive neuropsychology, and cognitive psychology. In particular, this dissertation argues that consciousness is actually a structural property of the brain relative to higher level information processing. ;I argue that qualitative states are aligned with a single and distinct memory system. Understanding how that system works, and how it differs from other systems, should allow us to "decompose" consciousness in a naturalistic framework. Though the operations of our different memory systems are not completely understood, it is clear that our "semantic" memory system can be identified with conscious experience. The study of semantic memory across the various investigative domains within the cognitive sciences bounds the phenomena of consciousness such as to make it amenable to scientific scrutiny. This then gives us a solid interdisciplinary framework in which to begin a thorough study of qualitative experience. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction The Inscrutability of Objectual Reference Empiricism, Naturalism, and Provincialism References.

The data discussed strongly suggest that neural imaging does not unduly sway judges and jurors; in fact, it is often counterproductive. The percentage of appellate cases in which the decision was favorable to defendants with brain scan data mirrored those of decisions without such proffered evidence. Moreover, fully two-thirds of the scans admitted were either inconclusive or showed normal brain structures. In decisions referencing brain scans, judges mentioned defendant behavior significantly more often than they referred to the defendant’s brain. Finally, (...) in the actual decisions themselves, judges often ignored relevant imaging data in favor of case precedent or misinterpreted the data so that they would fit with the judges’ initial reactions and opinions. (shrink)

Many philosophers of psychology fail to appreciate the constructivist process of science as well as its pragmatic aspects. A well-developed philosophy of science helps to clear many conceptual confusions. However, ridding ourselves of popular complaints only opens more sophisticated worries regarding how we generalize specific events and how we use those generalizations to build physical systems and abstract models. These questions can still be answered though by realizing that science is largely a social enterprise, and how and what we explain (...) depends a great deal upon who is asking the question of whom and when. (shrink)

I have two goals in this paper. First, I want to show by example that inferences about theoretical entities are relatively contingent affairs. Previously accepted conceptual metaphors in science set both the general form of new theories and our acceptance of the theories as plausible. In addition, they determine how we define the relevant parameters in investigating phenomena in the first place. These items then determine how we conceptualize things in the world. Second, and maybe more importantly, I want to (...) solve a puzzle that falls out of our current explication of attention, namely why we have it. Given the now widely accepted view that our brains are massively parallel, it is difficult to see why we should have evolved attentional mechanisms at all. Why gate when we can already process what we transduce in parallel? Here I answer that puzzle and suggest a perspective on attention that makes it a bit easier to understand, although this perspective also entails that we have to revise how we individuate experimental protocols and relevant data. (shrink)

Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration is a theory of social action, which claims that society should be understood in terms of action and structure; a duality rather than two separate entities. This paper introduces some of the central characteristics of structuration theory, presenting a conceptual framework that helps to explore how people produce the systems and structures that shape their practice. By understanding how people produce and reproduce structures, then there is the potential for changing them. Criticisms that have been (...) raised about the theory are introduced, followed by examples of how the theory might be useful to nursing research. Structuration theory can be employed to explore how nurses produce, reproduce, and transform nursing practice through social interaction across time and space. (shrink)

In their recent bookUnfit for the Future, Persson and Savulescu make a heartfelt plea for the increasing necessity of “moral enhancement”, interventions that improve human capacities for moral behaviour.3They argue that, with all the technological advances of the 20thand 21stcenturies, the sheer scope of horror that humans can now potentially wreak on their neighbours or the world is staggering. Hence, we are morally obliged to use interventions at our disposal to prevent such atrocities. However, as we learn more about human (...) behaviour and decision-making, the argument that we are morally obligated to morally enhance our friends, neighbours, or countrymen starts to fall apart. For us to be more moral requires more than sharpening our reasoning capacities so that we can more effectively recognise what is better or increasing personal motivation so that we are more likely to do what is good. It requires that we all agree on what the good is and how to achieve it, and that there are no social, cultural, physical, or psychological impediments that prevent us from recognising the good or acting on it. To illustrate my position, I use the phenomenon of self-radicalised terrorists as a case study. In particular, I focus on how historians, psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, and political scientists understand the process of self-radicalisation, who self-radicalises, and why, and what all this tells us about it should be “treated”. Part of my purpose in working my way through this case study is to demonstrate that many philosophers misunderstand or over-simplify the science behind so-called immoral actions; consequently, their discussions of whether to enhance someone's morality miss their mark. (shrink)

While the research programs in early cognitive science and artificial intelligence aimed to articulate what cognition was in ideal terms, much research in contemporary computational neuroscience looks at how and why brains fail to function as they should ideally. This focus on impairment affects how we understand David Marr's hypothesized three levels of understanding. In this essay, we suggest some refinements to Marr's distinctions using a population activity model of cortico-striatal circuitry exploring impulsivity and behavioral inhibition as a case study. (...) In particular, we urge that Marr's computational level should be redefined to include a description of how systems break down. We also underscore that feed-forward processing, cognition disconnected from behavioral context, and representations do not always drive cognition in the way that Marr originally assumed. (shrink)

"An essential overview of an important intellectual movement, Logical Empiricism in North America offers the first significant, sustained, and multidisciplinary attempt to understand the intellectual, cultural, and political dimensions of ...

The sensation of will is not the same thing as the will itself any more than the sensation of hunger is the same thing as being devoid of nutrients. This is not a really surprising claim, but it is the only claim to which Wegner is entitled in his book.

This essay addresses the question: What is the probative value of including neuroscience data in court cases where the defendant might have had a traumatic brain injury? That is, this essay attempts to articulate how well we can connect scientific data and clinical test results to the demands of the Daubert standard in the United States’ court system, and, given the fact that neuroimaging is already being used in our courts, what, if anything, we should do about this fact. Ultimately, (...) I am not sure that there are completely satisfactory answers to this query at this particular time in our legal history. I briefly rehearse the recent use of brain research in our legal system, summarize how neuroscience data regarding TBI and its relation to poor behavioral outcomes are currently used in the courtroom, review challenges with using these data, and highlight fundamental tensions between how the legal system views the causes of behavior and how medicine, neuroscience, and psychology do. Until these tensions are resolved, it is unclear the place neuroscience data should have in courts. (shrink)

In his new book Propelled: How Boredom, Frustration, and Anticipation Lead Us to the Good Life, Elpidorou oversimplifies the behavioral data on unexpected outcomes, and, as a result, has a more expansive view of “frustration” than should be allowed. I argue that in order to understand the basis of human motivation, we need to distinguish between non-rewards and punishments. Humans are highly motivated by what they perceive as an unexpected non-reward, but they are not by what they experience as an (...) aversive punishment. And it is aversive punishments that we find frustrating; in contrast, we find unexpected non-rewards invigorating. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: Nicholas Humphrey is interested in illustrating how it is that the mind is the brain. We can think of him as taking up David Chalmers’ and Joe Levine's challenge to solve the so-called hard problem, to bridge the so-called explanatory gap. For after being convinced, as we surely are, that minds are housed in brains via the activity of neurons, we still need to explain why that should be the case. Why is it that our lumpy grey matter (...) should contain consciousness? Even if we agree that it does, we still need to arrange the facts so that having minded brains is a patently obvious truth. (shrink)

While schizophrenia may be genetically determined up to a point, neither it nor its nearest relatives offer any sort of reproductive advantage to its sufferers. Instead, from an evolutionary point of view, schizophrenia is benign – it neither promotes nor inhibits survival to reproduction. Because it is benign, its rate of occurrence should remain fairly constant over time.

While there may be interesting theoretical differences between cortical and subcortical malfunctions, it is not a difference that is going to separate the psychological from the biological. For, the distinctions we draw between the “psychological” and “biological” turn on our assessments of others' conscious experiences, and not on anything deeper or more profound.

This book is perhaps the first to open a dialogue between the two disciplines.