Robert Coles' sentiment characterizes well the moral tenor of medical education today. Indeed, medical educators are frequently “seized by spasms of genuine moral awareness,” as they try to cope with the massive social and economic problems that face medical schools and teaching hospitals. The perception among educators that we currently fail to adequately teach several core aspects of doctoring, including professional values and behavior, constitutes one such spasm. In this case, the proposed remedy has generated considerable enthusiasm, but whether the (...) “core competencies” curriculum will make a difference, or simply “accommodate to the prevailing rhythms of the world we inhabit,” remains to be seen. (shrink)

Science relies on models and idealizations that are known not to be true. Even so, science is epistemically reputable. To accommodate science, epistemology should focus on understanding rather than knowledge and should recognize that the understanding of a topic need not be factive. This requires reconfiguring the norms of epistemic acceptability. If epistemology has the resources to accommodate science, it will also have the resources to show that art too advances understanding.

Teaching is not testimony. Although both convey information, they have different uptake requirements. Testimony aims to impart information and typically succeeds if the recipient believes that informationon account of having been told by a reliable informant. Teaching aims to equip learners to go beyond the information given—to leverage that information to broaden, deepen, and critique their current understanding of a topic. Teaching fails if the recipients believe the information only because it is what they have been told.

Smoking is frequently presented as being particularly problematic when the smoker is a pregnant woman because of the potential harm to the future child. This premise is used to justify targeting pregnant women with a unique approach to smoking cessation including policies such as the routine testing of all pregnant women for carbon monoxide at every antenatal appointment. This paper examines the evidence that such policies are justified by the aim of harm prevention and argues that targeting pregnant women in (...) this way is likely to do more harm than good. Routine carbon monoxide testing is particularly problematic as it sends a message to pregnant women that they cannot be trusted either to truthfully answer questions as to whether or not they smoke, or to make decisions in the best interests of themselves and their future children in the way that non-pregnant individuals are. Further, if the aim is to reduce rates of prenatal harm, the evidence suggests that adopting a supportive and empowering approach to prenatal care is the most effective way to achieve this, something that the current policies aimed at pregnant women are in conflict with. (shrink)

Pragmatism’s heartening recent revival (spearheaded by Richard Rorty’s bold intervention into analytic philosophy Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) has coalesced into a distinctive philosophical movement frequently referred to as ‘neopragmatism’. This movement interprets the very meaning of pragmatism as rejection of metaphysical commitments: our words do not primarily serve to represent non-linguistic entities, but are tools to achieve a range of human purposes. A particularly thorough and consistent version of this position is Huw Price’s global expressivism. We here critically (...) appraise Price’s understanding of a commitment to pragmatism as a rejection of metaphysics, and argue that such rejection is not as easy or desirable as Price claims. First we argue that Price’s global expressivism itself draws on significant metaphysical assumptions (a ‘word-world’ dualism, and a nominalism concerning the meaning of general terms). Then we seek to resolve neopragmatist anxieties about metaphysics by arguing that metaphysics is indispensable for pragmatist philosophizing insofar as it seeks ways for human beings to realise themselves through practices of understanding reality and their place in it. If, as we argue, metaphysics consists in a maximally general inquiry into the nature and structure of reality, to try to block it seems a puzzling exercise in epistemic self-harm. (shrink)

The development of genomics has dramatically expanded the scope of genetic research, and collections of genetic biosamples have proliferated in countries with active genomics research programs. In this essay, we consider a particular kind of collection, national biobanks. National biobanks are often presented by advocates as an economic ‘‘resource’’ that will be used by both basic researchers and academic biologists, as well as by pharmaceutical diagnostic and clinical genomics companies. Although national biobanks have been the subject of intense interest in (...) recent social science literature, most prior work on this topic focuses either on bioethical issues related to biobanks, such as the question of informed consent, or on the possibilities for scientific citizenship that they make possible. We emphasize, by contrast, the economic aspect of biobanks, focusing specifically on the way in which national biobanks create biovalue. Our emphasis on the economic aspect of biobanks allows us to recognize the importance of what we call clinical labor—that is, the regularized, embodied work that members of the national population are expected to perform in their role as biobank participants—in the creation of biovalue through biobanks. Moreover, it allows us to understand how the technical way in which national biobanks link clinical labor to databases alters both medical and popular understandings of risk for common diseases and conditions. (shrink)

Issues of balancing data accessibility with ethical considerations and governance of a genomics research biobank, Generation Scotland, are explored within the evolving policy landscape of the past ten years. During this time data sharing and open data access have become increasingly important topics in biomedical research. Decisions around data access are influenced by local arrangements for governance and practices such as linkage to health records, and the global through policies for biobanking and the sharing of data with large-scale biomedical research (...) data resources and consortia. We use a literature review of policy relevant documents which apply to the conduct of biobanks in two areas: support for open access and the protection of data subjects and researchers managing a bioresource. We present examples of decision making within a biobank based upon observations of the Generation Scotland Access Committee. We reflect upon how the drive towards open access raises ethical dilemmas for established biorepositories containing data and samples from human subjects. Despite much discussion in science policy literature about standardisation, the contextual aspects of biobanking are often overlooked. Using our engagement with GS we demonstrate the importance of local arrangements in the creation of a responsive ethical approach to biorepository governance. We argue that governance decisions regarding access to the biobank are intertwined with considerations about maintenance and viability at the local level. We show that in addition to the focus upon ever more universal and standardised practices, the local expertise gained in the management of such repositories must be supported. A commitment to open access in genomics research has found almost universal backing in science and health policy circles, but repositories of data and samples from human subjects may have to operate under managed access, to protect privacy, align with participant consent and ensure that the resource can be managed in a sustainable way. Data access committees need to be reflexive and flexible, to cope with changing technology and opportunities and threats from the wider data sharing environment. To understand these interactions also involves nurturing what is particular about the biobank in its local context. (shrink)

Clinical research is a necessity if effective and safe treatments are to be developed. However, this may well include the need for research that is best described as ‘invasive’ in that it may be associated with some discomfort or inconvenience. Limitations in the undertaking of invasive research involving people with intellectual disabilities (ID) are perhaps related to anxieties within the academic community and among ethics committees; however, the consequence of this neglect is that innovative treatments specific to people with ID (...) may not be developed. Such concerns are likely to continue while there is limited published knowledge regarding the actual experiences of people with ID who have participated in invasive clinical research. As part of a pilot study trialling the novel use of a surgically inserted device to curb overeating in people with Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) we have investigated the experience of research through semistructured qualitative interviews involving three participants and their carers. Thematic analysis revealed that the adults with PWS and their family carers rated their participation positively, seeing it as a rewarding and enriching experience. This brief report discusses findings from our interview data in order to highlight strategies which may ensure that research is acceptable to participants, meets the necessary ethical standards and is able to achieve the aims set out by the researchers. To our knowledge, this is the first study to record experiences directly from people with PWS and their carers regarding their involvement in invasive clinical research. (shrink)

I start by asking what Aristotle knew (or thought) about Heraclitus: what were the key features of Heraclitus's philosophy as far as Aristotle was concerned? In this section of the paper I suggest that there are some patterns to Aristotle's references to Heraclitus: besides the classic doctrines (flux, ekpyrosis and the unity of opposites) on the one hand, and the opening of Heraclitus's book on the other, Aristotle knows and reports a few slightly less obvious sayings, one of which is (...) in my title. Secondly, I ask some further questions. Is there any systematic connection between the bits that Aristotle reports? Do they hang together? Ought we to see here some relic of an Aristotelian understanding of what made Heraclitus tick? If we juxtapose these themes and Aristotle's comments on them, I suggest, we can generate some suggestive motifs, in particular a rather curious fascination with smoking, and the pleasures of inhaling. Finally, I suggest that smells (and the way the world would be if smells were the only differences to be discerned) are important in understanding what Heraclitus was doing. (shrink)

Testimony consists in imparting information without supplying evidence or argument to back one’s claims. To what extent does testimony convey epistemic warrant? C. J. A. Coady argues, on Davidsonian grounds, that (1) most testimony is true, hence (2) most testimony supplies warrant sufficient for knowledge. I appeal to Grice’s maxims to undermine Coady’s argument and to show that the matter is more complicated and context-sensitive than is standardly recognized. Informative exchanges take place within networks of shared, tacit assumptions that affect (...) the scope and strength of our claims, and the level of warrant required for their responsible assertion. The maxims explain why different levels of warrant are transferred in different contexts. (shrink)

Comment répondre à la crise environnementale et aux menaces qu’elle fait peser sur la poursuite de notre mode de vie? Devons-nous mobiliser nos forces pour lutter contre la crise, changer radicalement nos comportements? Ne faudrait-il pas plutôt veiller à nous adapter à une situation transformée? Ces deux pôles sont présents dans les politiques environnementales. Pour répondre au changement climatique on envisage à la fois des politiques d’atténuation (mitigation) des émissions de gaz à ef...

One of the most visible symbols of the debate over human rights and national security in the context of the U.S. "War on Terrorism" has been the detainment of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The controversy concerning the fate of the nearly 600 prisoners demonstrates the emergence of new modes of democratic deliberation over how to strike the balance between rights and security. These new modes (...) of deliberation involve nongovernmental organizations and individuals who function as norm entrepreneurs, by mobilizing public opinion through transnational networks of opinion-makers and policymakers. Transnational networks of norm entrepreneurs have emerged where traditional avenues for foreign policymaking in the U.S. have failed to create a space for meaningful consideration of human rights in the rights/security balance. These traditional avenues are envisioned in the Constitution, which gives the President authority regarding foreign affairs, bounded by checks provided to Congress and the courts. While the goal of the constitutional process is to bring these institutional players into a dialogue, Congress and the judiciary have failed to engage the President in a conversation regarding the balance between human rights and national security. In the absence of initiatives by the government, nongovernmental actors have used communication structures within transnational networks to promote what this Article calls a dialogic approach to enforcement of human rights law. (shrink)

As a response to Moran's (1994) recommendation that Heidegger's Destruktion be extensively elaborated and critiqued, this paper suggests a way in which Heidegger's thinking can be more clearly understood as a search for how better to ‘say' the destruction. By briefly tracing how Heidegger's thinking on the Destruktion repeatedly turns against itself throughout his writings, it is demonstrated that Heidegger does indeed revise the notion by abandoning the term in his later writing; to replace it first with the concept of (...) ‘overcoming', and subsequently with the notion of Verwindung . This self-critical reworking of the Destruktion is evident in his turning towards these concepts; which is taken up by Derrida's deconstruction in its simultaneous turning towards and away from Heidegger's Destruktion . South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 27 (1) 2008 pp. 52-68. (shrink)

Much discussion of meaning by philosophers over the last 300 years has been predicated on a Cartesian first-person authority (i.e. “infallibilism”) with respect to what one’s terms mean. However this has problems making sense of the way the meanings of scientific terms develop, an increase in scientific knowledge over and above scientists’ ability to quantify over new entities. Although a recent conspicuous embrace of rigid designation has broken up traditional meaning-infallibilism to some extent, this new dimension to the meaning of (...) terms such as “water” is yet to receive a principled epistemological undergirding (beyond the deliverances of “intuition” with respect to certain somewhat unusual possible worlds). Charles Peirce’s distinctive, naturalistic philosophy of language is mined to provide a more thoroughly fallibilist, and thus more realist, approach to meaning, with the requisite epistemology. Both his pragmatism and his triadic account of representation, it is argued, produce an original approach to meaning, analysing it in processual rather than objectual terms, and opening a distinction between “meaning for us”, the meaning a term has at any given time for any given community and “meaning simpliciter”. the way use of a given term develops over time (often due to a posteriori input from the world which is unable to be anticipated in advance). This account provocatively undermines a certain distinction between “semantics” and “ontology” which is often taken for granted in discussions of realism. (shrink)

This book helps break down and analyze the process of solid decision making.

A study of Hippolytus of Rome and his treatment of Presocratic Philosophy, used as a case study to argue against the use of collections of fragments and in favour of the idea of reading "embedded texts" with attention to the interpretation and interests of the quoting author. A study of methodology in early Greek Philosophy. Includes novel interpretations of Heraclitus and Empedocles, and an argument for the unity of Empedocles's poem.

Necessity is a touchstone issue in the thought of Charles Peirce, not least because his pragmatist account of meaning relies upon modal terms. We here offer an overview of Peirce’s highly original and multi-faceted take on the matter. We begin by considering how a self-avowed pragmatist and fallibilist can even talk about necessary truth. We then outline the source of Peirce’s theory of representation in his three categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, (monadic, dyadic and triadic relations). These have modal (...) purport insofar as the first category corresponds to possibility, the second to mechanical necessity and the third to a kind of semantic or intentional necessity. We then turn to Peirce’s explicit modal epistemology and show how it began as information-relative, with different modalities (e.g. logical, physical, practical) distinguished in terms of respective ‘designated states of information’, and shifted later in his life towards a more robust realism founded in direct perception of ideas in their relations. We then turn to Peirce’s formal logic, focusing on his diagrammatic system of Existential Graphs where he did his most serious logical research. Finally we discuss Peirce’s modal metaphysics and its implications for determinism and realism about universals. (shrink)

_Using the thought of Christian thinker Thomas Aquinas and Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi, explores how to exercise and limit authority._.

This Article attempts to clarify a proposition of certain Canadian authors that while class actions represent a significant part of our court activities, they may not truly be compensating our citizens. I argue that leading up to the present study, we did not know for certain whether a class action was an effective mechanism to compensate class members. Through empirical data collected up by the Class Actions Lab from the past twelve years from cases filed in the province of Quebec, (...) District of Montreal, analyzed through the lens of a collective approach to compensation, I demonstrate that Quebec citizens are in fact being compensated by class actions. (shrink)

Philosophical investigation in synthetic biology has focused on the knowledge-seeking questions pursued, the kind of engineering techniques used, and on the ethical impact of the products produced. However, little work has been done to investigate the processes by which these epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical forms of inquiry arise in the course of synthetic biology research. An attempt at this work relying on a particular area of synthetic biology will be the aim of this chapter. I focus on the reengineering of (...) metabolic pathways through the manipulation and construction of small DNA-based devices and systems synthetic biology. Rather than focusing on the engineered products or ethical principles that result, I will investigate the processes by which these arise. As such, the attention will be directed to the activities of practitioners, their manipulation of tools, and the use they make of techniques to construct new metabolic devices. Using a science-in-practice approach, I investigate problems at the intersection of science, philosophy of science, and sociology of science. I consider how practitioners within this area of synthetic biology reconfigure biological understanding and ethical categories through active modelling and manipulation of known functional parts, biological pathways for use in the design of microbial machines to solve problems in medicine, technology, and the environment. We might describe this kind of problem-solving as relying on what Helen Longino referred to as “social cognition” or the type of scientific work done within what Hasok Chang calls “systems of practice”. My aim in this chapter will be to investigate the relationship that holds between systems of practice within metabolic engineering research and social cognition. I will attempt to show how knowledge and normative valuation are generated from this particular network of practitioners. In doing so, I suggest that the social nature of scientific inquiry is ineliminable to both knowledge acquisition and ethical evaluations. (shrink)

Conducted among parents of young ice hockey players, this field experiment tested if making salient increasingly popular social norms that promote sportspersonship, learning, and having fun in sports, increases parents’ own self-determined endorsement of these behaviors and values, improves their psychological well-being, and impacts on their children’s on-ice behaviors. Hockey parents were randomly assigned to the experimental condition vs. control condition. Parents’ motivations for encouraging their child to learn and to have fun in hockey were then assessed. Score sheets for (...) the games that followed the study provided access to their children’s on-ice behaviors, as indicators of sportspersonship. Parents in the experimental condition reported higher self-determination for encouraging their child to learn and have fun in hockey compared to parents in the control condition. Furthermore, children of parents in the experimental condition had more assists. A mediation model revealed that the dynamic norms manipulation increased parents’ self-determined motivation for encouraging their child to learn and to have fun in hockey, which in turn, predicted higher psychological well-being. Together, these results provide support for the contention that highlighting increasingly popular social norms that promote sportspersonship, learning, and fun in sports, represents a promising strategy for creating positive social change in this life context. (shrink)

Using Rational Choice Theory to account for moral agency has always had some uncomfortable aspect to it. Economists’ attempts to include the moral dimension of behaviour either as a preference for moral behaviour or as an external constraint on self-interested choice, have been criticized for relying on tautologies or lacking a realistic picture of motivation. Homo Oeconomicus, even when conceptually enriched by all kinds of motivations, is ultimately still characterized as caring only for what lies in his interest. Amartya Sen (...) has drawn the economists’ attention to a specific blind spot in rational choice theory (henceforth RCT), i.e. the idea of commitment. By starting from the premise that the human capacity to commit is a necessary precondition for moral behaviour, our aim in this paper is twofold: first, we argue that taking the idea of commitment seriously in economics requires an enriched concept of rationality. Second, we reject a Kantian interpretation of Sen’s concept of commitment and argue that Harry Frankfurt’s views about caring can be used to develop the concept of commitment in a direction that is compatible with Rational Choice Theory. (shrink)