__Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication__ focuses on recent neuroscientific investigations of infant brains and of patients with disorders of consciousness, both of which are at the forefront of contemporary neuroscience. The prospective use of neurotechnology to access mental states in these subjects, including neuroimaging, brain simulation and brain computer interfaces, offers new opportunities for clinicians and researchers, but has also received specific attention from philosophical, scientific, ethical and legal points of view. This book offers the first systematic assessment of these (...) issues, investigating the tools neurotechnology offers to care for verbally non-communicative subjects and suggesting a multidisciplinary approach to the ethical and legal implications of ordinary and experimental practices. The book is divided into three parts: the first and second focus on the scientific and clinical implications of neurological tools for DOC patient and infant care. With reference to these developments, the third and final part presents the case for re-evaluating classical ethical and legal concepts, such as authority, informed consent and privacy. Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication will appeal to researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of cognitive science, medical ethics, medical technology, and the philosophy of the mind. With implications for patient care, it will also be a useful resource for clinicians, medical centres and health practitioners. (shrink)

This article argues that beneath the veneer of legitimacy in the organ, tissue, and body part transplantation systems exists a horrifying history of human commodification whose vestiges surprisingly linger in contemporary supply and allocation systems. This history, as the Article demonstrates, dates back to the colonial period in the United States, where “grave robbing” became an important feature in the advancement of medicine. This legacy lives on.

An apparently simple answer to this question is 'diversity': there is a diversity of women readers, diversity of interests, diversity of methods and diversity of results of women reading the Bible. In this article I will discuss the complex reality of the diversity of contemporary women's reading of the Bible. I will discuss women readers under two headings, namely the everyday, non-academic reader on the one hand, and the professional, academically trained biblical exegete on the other. I will first suggest (...) a general comparison of these two groups before I treat each one in greater detail. Finally, I will offer a reading of a story about a woman from the Gospel of Mark that draws on feminist hermeneutics to read for a meaning that liberates women from a burdensome, conventional reading. (shrink)

Even before Nietzsche, Stirner opened a crak inside the metaphysical western tradition, that always considered life as something that must be judged, understood and evaluated, and that used knowledge as the instrument to go deep in the truth of being. In The Ego and His Own we attend the attempt to reverse this tradition: thinking does not have the function to conceive and found what is «real», but it does make tough and assure the loss of concerns. The unbelief and (...) the loss of concerns are the elements of Stirner’s spectrology that, instead of imposing the laws of real life, it begins to fight «new battles» against the huge and horrible shadow of God. One of these battles, the one Stirner hard devote himself to, is the «Man’s death». Normal 0 14 false false false IT X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabella normale"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}. (shrink)

La de orden público es una noción tan central como compleja. Este ensayo busca ofrecer elementos esenciales para desarrollar una crítica de dicha noción ampliamente utilizada en el pensamiento jurídico y político. Para ello, se proponen cinco partes de una posible teoría general del orden público, evidenciando presupuestosy mecanismos de funcionamiento: la ontología, la física, la política, la ética, y la estética. Los mecanismos a través de los cuales operan y las presuposiciones de cada uno de ellos son cuidadosamente analizados.

In this paper we argue that transparency of machine learning algorithms, just as explanation, can be defined at different levels of abstraction. We criticize recent attempts to identify the explanation of black box algorithms with making their decisions (post-hoc) interpretable, focusing our discussion on counterfactual explanations. These approaches to explanation simplify the real nature of the black boxes and risk misleading the public about the normative features of a model. We propose a new form of algorithmic transparency, that consists in (...) explaining algorithms as an intentional product, that serves a particular goal, or multiple goals (Daniel Dennet’s design stance) in a given domain of applicability, and that provides a measure of the extent to which such a goal is achieved, and evidence about the way that measure has been reached. We call such idea of algorithmic transparency “design publicity.” We argue that design publicity can be more easily linked with the justification of the use and of the design of the algorithm, and of each individual decision following from it. In comparison to post-hoc explanations of individual algorithmic decisions, design publicity meets a different demand (the demand for impersonal justification) of the explainee. Finally, we argue that when models that pursue justifiable goals (which may include fairness as avoidance of bias towards specific groups) to a justifiable degree are used consistently, the resulting decisions are all justified even if some of them are (unavoidably) based on incorrect predictions. For this argument, we rely on John Rawls’s idea of procedural justice applied to algorithms conceived as institutions. (shrink)

Ethical medical decision-making for a child is generally navigated with various standards and models that have been developed to address its complexities. A case is presented of the parents’ refusal of a surgical procedure for their child considered by medical providers as essential and potentially lifesaving, along with the ethical debate of whether the parents’ decision was in the child’s best interest and whether their refusal reached a threshold to report and seek state intervention. Utilizing the best interest standard and (...) additional ethical decision-making tools, the ethicists helped the medical team accept the parents’ decision as reasonable, thus avoiding involvement with Child Protective Services. It is my goal to clarify the parents’ decision as reasonable and as honoring their child’s best interests and inherent dignity through the lens of Catholic anthropological and moral principles. These strengthen the ethical and moral arguments for the parents’ decision and the opposition to state intervention. (shrink)

Nicholas Rescher's epistemology is fully evolutionary. However, which kind of evolution are we referring to when talking of evolutionary epistemology? If we take evolution to be an undifferentiated concept we are on a wrong track. The evolutionary "pattern" is certainly one, but this should not lead us to assume that the specific characteristics of mankind must be left out of the picture. Rescher's evolutionary framework is pluralistic. We have both a biological evolution which is Darwinian, and a cultural evolution which (...) is Teilhardian, governed by a rationally-guided selection among purposefully devised mutational variations. (shrink)

Most scientific theories are globally inconsistent. Chunk and Permeate is a method of rational reconstruction that can be used to separate, and identify, locally consistent chunks of reasoning or explanation. This then allows us to justify reasoning in a globally inconsistent theory. We extend chunk and permeate by adding a visually transparent way of guiding the individuation of chunks and deciding on what information permeates from one chunk to the next. The visual representation is in the form of bundle diagrams. (...) We then extend the bundle diagrams to include not only reasoning in the presence of inconsistent information or reasoning in the logical sense of deriving a conclusion from premises, but more generally reasoning in the sense of trying to understand a phenomenon in science. This extends the use of the bundle diagrams in terms of the base space and the fibres. We then apply this to a case in physics, that of understanding binding energies in the nucleus of an atom using together inconsistent models: the liquid drop model and the shell model. We draw some philosophical conclusions concerning scientific reasoning, paraconsistent reasoning, the role of logic in science and the unity of science. (shrink)

There are three elements in this paper. One is what we shall call ‘the Hungarian project’. This is the collected work of Andréka, Madarász, Németi, Székely and others. The second is Molinini’s philosophical work on the nature of mathematical explanations in science. The third is my pluralist approach to mathematics. The theses of this paper are that the Hungarian project gives genuine mathematical explanations for physical phenomena. A pluralist account of mathematical explanation can help us with appreciating the significance of (...) the Hungarian project. The significance consists in the fruitfulness and spread of the project. The spread is wide because the explanations are written in the very familiar language of first-order logic with identity. For this reason, the explanation is understandable to many mathematicians. Because of the methodology adopted in the Hungarian project, the explanations are fruitful in another sense. In the Hungarian project certain questions are asked that would not be asked with a more usual methodology. The Hungarians are distinguished from other scientists in asking logical and mathematical questions, and these both deepen our understanding of the physical theories and induce further spread to mathematics and philosophy. (shrink)

Permissivism is the view that, sometimes, there is more than one doxastic attitude that is perfectly rationalised by the evidence. Impermissivism is the denial of Permissivism. Several philosophers, with the aim to defend either Impermissivism or Permissivism, have recently discussed the value of (im)permissive rationality. This paper focuses on one kind of value-conferring considerations, stemming from the so-called “truth-connection” enjoyed by rational doxastic attitudes. The paper vindicates the truth-connected value of permissive rationality by pursuing a novel strategy which rests on (...) two main planks: first, there is a distinction between a fine-grained and a coarse-grained type-individuation of belief-forming methods. Secondly, different kinds of decision-theoretic reasoning, i.e. expected-accuracy reasoning and accuracy-domination reasoning, must be paired with a fine-grained and a coarse-grained type-individuation of methods, respectively. I argue that while the first pair is wholly irrelevant to the question of the truth-connection, the second affords the means to a permissivist explanation of the truth-connected value of rationality. (shrink)

The pluralist sheds the more traditional ideas of truth and ontology. This is dangerous, because it threatens instability of the theory. To lend stability to his philosophy, the pluralist trades truth and ontology for rigour and other ‘fixtures’. Fixtures are the steady goal posts. They are the parts of a theory that stay fixed across a pair of theories, and allow us to make translations and comparisons. They can ultimately be moved, but we tend to keep them fixed temporarily. Apart (...) from considering rigour of proof as a fixture, I discuss fixed models, invariant notions and fixed information about objects across theories. There are other fixtures, but it is enough to start with these. (shrink)

Ethical reflection on Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a priority. In this article, we propose a methodological model for a comprehensive ethical analysis of some uses of AI, notably as a replacement of human actors in specific activities. We emphasize the need for conceptual clarification of relevant key terms (e.g., intelligence) in order to undertake such reflection. Against that background, we distinguish two levels of ethical analysis, one practical and one theoretical. Focusing on the state of AI at present, we (...) suggest that regardless of the presence of intelligence, the lack of morally relevant features calls for caution when considering the role of AI in some specific human activities. (shrink)

Prenatal screening can significantly benefit parents and the community. However, it has created a dilemma for women as it requires them to quickly decide whether to continue a pregnancy or terminate it should the test indicate a foetal abnormality. This can be psychologically traumatic for women torn between their connection to an unborn child with all its possible imperfections, and a desire to prevent its suffering as a disabled child in later life. A woman must also consider her own and (...) her family's future welfare. Extensive research into the physical aspects of prenatal screening has not explored the meaning of the experience for women or whether termination is the most appropriate option. This article examines recent qualitative studies, concluding that women who terminate a pregnancy following prenatal screening may experience an acute grief reaction or be plagued by guilt and fear that can precipitate marital breakdown. Additionally, there is a risk that through striving to eradicate congenital disability, a community risks promoting a cult of perfectionism that may have discriminatory effects on disabled people. (shrink)

Most guidelines and proposalsfor Internet research ethics are based onregulations for human subjects research. In therelated research, Internet material is viewedas animate and described as people. Humanitiesresearchers have rarely been a part of thedebate about Internet research ethics and thepractices of these scholars have not been takeninto consideration when drafting most of theguidelines. This threatens to limit the kindsof Internet research that can be performed – critical strategies are particularlydiscouraged – and the ways that researchers andother users understand the Internet.Researchers (...) who use human subjects models havenot fully acknowledged computer mediation, theconstructed aspects of Internetrepresentations, and the screen. If we viewInternet material as cultural production thenthe models for Internet research would be ArtHistory and Visual Culture, English andLiterary Studies, Film and Media Studies, Musicand Sound Studies, and Theatre and PerformanceStudies. A more complete integration of theseapproaches into Internet Studies – either as asole investigatory strategy or in tandem withother forms of inquiry – would changeresearchers' ethical questions. It would alsoshow instances in which human subjectsguidelines do not apply to complex Internetmaterial. It is imperative to demonstrate thatInternet material is not people because thisconception makes highly constructed words andimages seem natural and stereotypedrepresentations appear to be real. (shrink)

We argue that in extensive decision problems (extensive games with a single player) with imperfect recall care must be taken in interpreting information sets and strategies. Alternative interpretations allow for different kinds of analysis. We address the following issues: 1. randomization at information sets; 2. consistent beliefs; 3. time consistency of optimal plans; 4. the multiselves approach to decision making. We illustrate our discussion through an example that we call the ‘‘paradox of the absentminded driver.’’ Journal of Economic Literature Classification (...) Numbers: C7, D0. 1997 Academic Press. (shrink)

This paper addresses a largely neglected question in ongoing debates over disagreement: what is the relation, if any, between disagreements involving credences and disagreements involving outright beliefs? The first part of the paper offers some desiderata for an adequate account of credal and full disagreement. The second part of the paper argues that both phenomena can be subsumed under a schematic definition which goes as follows: A and B disagree if and only if the accuracy conditions of A's doxastic attitude (...) are such that, if they were fulfilled, this would ipso facto make B's doxastic attitude inaccurate, or vice-versa. (shrink)

1. Une polémique historique En matière de syntaxe, la notion de corpus fut très controversée et reste encore problématique. Avant Chomsky, les structuralistes utilisaient des corpus, mais le terme désignait alors un échantillon représentatif et homogène d’un aspect syntaxique particulier ou d’une langue donnée et était utilisé dans une perspective behaviouriste exlusivement empiriste et taxinomique. C’est contre ce type de « corpus » que Chomsky s’est prononcé lorsqu’il a commencé à développe...

En 1989, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham exprimait ainsi ses regrets : « Aujourd'hui encore, la voix de la femme noire est largement passée sous silence... L'histoire africaine-américaine n'a pas su aborder suffisamment la question du genre, de même que l'histoire des femmes a échoué à aborder la question raciale ». D'après elle, l'histoire des femmes africaines-américaines n'était ni un domaine marginal ni un sous-thème pittoresque. Elle soutenait au contraire que le fait d'inclure les femmes noi...