Approximately 20% of adult cancer patients are eligible to participate in a clinical trial, but only 2.5-9% do so. Accrual is even less for minority and medically underserved populations. As a result, critical life-saving treatments and quality of life services developed from research studies may not address their needs. This study questions the utility of the bioethical concern with therapeutic misconception (TM), a misconception that occurs when research subjects fail to distinguish between clinical research and ordinary treatment, and therefore attribute (...) therapeutic intent to research procedures in the safety net setting. This paper provides ethnographic insight into the ways in which research is discussed and related to standard treatment. (shrink)

How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resources provided by the (...) cognitive-social-cultural context of the problem; and dynamic processes of reasoning that extend ordinary cognition. Focusing on the third factor, Nersessian draws on cognitive science research and historical accounts of scientific practices to show how scientific and ordinary cognition lie on a continuum, and how problem-solving practices in one illuminate practices in the other. (shrink)

PARTI The Philosophical Situation: A Critical Appraisal We must begin with the mistake and find out the truth in it. That is, we must uncover the source of ...

This paper examines the nature of model-based reasoning in the interplay between theory and experiment in the context of biomedical engineering research laboratories, where problem solving involves using physical models. These "model systems" are sites of experimentation where in vitro models are used to screen, control, and simulate specific aspects of in vivo phenomena. As with all models, simulation devices are idealized representations, but they are also systems themselves, possessing engineering constraints. Drawing on research in contemporary cognitive science that construes (...) cognition as occurring in a complex distributed system comprising people and artifacts, I argue that reasoning with model systems is a constraint satisfaction process involving co-construction, manipulation, and revision of mental and physical models. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's commitment to the idea that _Dasein_ is ultimately gender neutral, as well as several other major aspects of his thought, raises significant questions for feminist philosophers. The fourteen essays included in this volume clearly illustrate the ways in which feminist readings can deepen our understanding of his philosophy. They illuminate both the richness and the limitations of the resources his work can provide for feminist thought. This volume engages the full scope of Heidegger's writings from_ Being and Time (...) _through his latest work, from his readings of the ancient Greek poets to his critique of modern technology. At the same time, it reflects a wide range of contemporary feminist concerns: the significance of gender difference; the role of the body in philosophical thought; the relationship between philosophy and the natural world, and between philosophy and the domestic realm; and the aspiration to move forward into a new, more just, political world. Included in this volume are important new essays by Ellen Armour, Carol Bigwood, Jack Caputo, Tina Chanter, Trish Glazebrook, Jennifer Gosetti, Luce Irigaray, Dorothy Leland, Mechthild Nagel, Gail Stenstad, and the editors—as well as a valuable historical and theoretical Introduction by Patricia Huntington, the first of Jacques Derrida's "Geschlecht" articles, and an important 1997 essay by Iris Marion Young. (shrink)

Excitation at widely dispersed loci in the cerebral cortex may represent a neural correlate of consciousness. Accordingly, each unique combination of excited neurons would determine the content of a conscious moment. This conceptualization would be strengthened if we could identify what orchestrates the various combinations of excited neurons. In the present paper, cholinergic afferents to the cerebral cortex are hypothesized to enhance activity at specific cortical circuits and determine the content of a conscious moment by activating certain combinations of postsynaptic (...) sites in select cortical modules. It is proposed that these selections are enabled by learning-related restructuring that simultaneously adjusts the cytoskeletal matrix at specific constellations of postsynaptic sites giving all a similar geometry. The underlying mechanism of conscious awareness hypothetically involves cholinergic mediation of linkages between microtubules and microtubule-associated protein-2 . The first reason for proposing this mechanism is that previous studies indicate cognitive-related changes in MAP-2 occur in cholinoceptive cells within discrete cortical modules. These cortical modules are found throughout the cerebral cortex, measure 1–2 mm2, and contain approximately 103–104cholinoceptive cells that are enriched with MAP-2. The subsectors of the hippocampus may function similarly to cortical modules. The second reason for proposing the current mechanism is that the MAP-2 rich cells throughout the cerebral cortex correspond almost exactly with the cortical cells containing muscarinic receptors. Many of these cholinoceptive, MAP-2 rich cells are large pyramidal cell types, but some are also small pyramidal cells and nonpyramidal types. The third reason for proposing the current mechanism is that cholinergic afferents are module-specific; cholinergic axons terminate wholly within individual cortical modules. The cholinergic afferents may be unique in this regard. Finally, the tapering apical dendrites of pyramidal cells are proposed as primary sites for cholinergic mediation of linkages between MAP-2 and microtubules because especially high amounts of MAP-2 are found here. Also, the possibility is raised that muscarinic actions on MAP-2 could modulate microtubular coherence and self-collapse, phenomena that have been suggested to underlie consciousness. (shrink)

Recourse to a being’s moral status is the ‘nuclear option’ of moral theorising—it tells us not only what obligations we have and to what degree, but whether we have obligations to them in the first place and whether their moral concern trumps concern for other beings simply in virtue of the kind of being they are. As such, we should only explain obligations in terms of a being’s moral status if doing so is principled and necessary to defend that obligation. (...) In ‘Pregnancy and Superior Moral Status: A Proposal for Two Thresholds of Personhood’, Robinson1 argues that pregnant women achieve a second and therefore superior threshold of moral status to ‘mere persons’. She insists that this is not a view about the woman and the fetus together but that ‘the pregnant woman herself is more than one individual’. This gives us strong reason to re-balance the imbalanced burdens experienced by women due to pregnancy. I will argue her proposal is neither principled nor necessary. We can explain special obligations to pregnant women without appealing to a distinct moral status, without reaching for the ‘nuclear option’. First, consider Robinson’s1 claim that pregnant women ‘are performing a role which is of supreme importance: that of creating new human life, and maintaining the survival of the human species’. …. (shrink)

Ault, Nancy J Spiritual direction is at risk in a society which is turning increasingly to personal feelings to validate experience and justify decision making. An appeal to feelings and emotions enables marketers to sell religion and spirituality as consumer products. As a product among many, the wider contexts of religion and spirituality may fade from consciousness and be lost. In such a 'pick and mix' culture, as well as losing sight of the embodied nature of understanding, what may (...) happen is a slow drifting apart of thinking, feelings and action. The cost of such a separation is high. Feelings may disintegrate into sentimentalism, thinking sink into legalism and action become uninformed reaction. Hence, practices which facilitate the intentional integration of mind, heart and behaviour can provide an essential counterbalance to the contemporary forces engendering separation. (shrink)

A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods. In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientists model complex dynamical biological systems using concepts, methods, materials, and other resources drawn primarily from engineering. They aim to understand these systems sufficiently to control or intervene in them. What Nersessian examines here is how cutting-edge (...) bioengineering scientists integrate the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of practice. Her findings and conclusions have broad implications for researchers in philosophy, science studies, cognitive science, and interdisciplinary studies, as well as scientists, educators, policy makers, and funding agencies. In studying the epistemic practices of scientists, Nersessian pushes the boundaries of the philosophy of science and cognitive science into areas not ventured before. She recounts a decades-long, wide-ranging, and richly detailed investigation of the innovative interdisciplinary modeling practices of bioengineering researchers in four university laboratories. She argues and demonstrates that the methods of cognitive ethnography and qualitative data analysis, placed in the framework of distributed cognition, provide the tools for a philosophical analysis of how scientific discoveries arise from complex systems in which the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of problem-solving are integrated into the epistemic practices of scientists. Specifically, she looks at how interdisciplinary environments shape problem-solving. Although Nersessian’s case material is drawn from the bioengineering sciences, her analytic framework and methodological approach are directly applicable to scientific research in a broader, more general sense, as well. (shrink)

The sexual division of labor and the social and economic value of women’s work in the home has been a problem that scholars have struggled with at least since the advent of the “second wave” women’s movement, but it has never entered into the primary discourses of political science. This paper argues that John Stuart Mill’s Political Economy provides innovative and useful arguments that address this thorny problem. Productive labor is essential to Mill’s conception of property, and property was vital (...) to women’s independence in Mill’s view. Yet since Mill thought most women would choose the “career” of wife and mother rather than working for wages, then granting that work productive status would provide a radical and inventive foundation for women’s equality. Mill, however, is ambiguous about the productive status of domestic labor, and is thereby representative of a crucial failure in political economic thought, as well as in egalitarian liberal thought on gender. But because Mill at the same time develops a conception of production that goes well beyond the narrow limits offered by other prominent political economists, he offers contemporary political scientists and theorists a way to rethink the relationship of reproductive to productive labor, the requirements for gender equality, and the accepted categories of political economy. (shrink)

Critiques social contract theory from the perspective of feminist psychoanalytic and psychological theory and develops an alternative feminist understanding of obligation as rooted in an epistemology of connection. Utilizes a feminist standpoint theory approach, and contains a discussion of the relevance of postmodernism to feminist philosophy in general and standpoint theory in particular.

We lay groundwork for applying ethnographic methods in philosophy of science. We frame our analysis in terms of two tasks: to identify the benefits of an ethnographic approach in philosophy of science and to structure an ethnographic approach for philosophical investigation best adapted to provide information relevant to philosophical interests and epistemic values. To this end, we advocate for a purpose-guided form of cognitive ethnography that mediates between the explanatory and normative interests of philosophy of science, while maintaining openness and (...) independence when framing such an investigation to achieve robust unbiased results. (shrink)

An application of Aristotle's conception of happiness.

In Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory, Nancy Hirschmann demonstrates not merely that modern theories of freedom are susceptible to gender and class analysis but that they must be analyzed in terms of gender and class in order to be understood at all. Through rigorous close readings of major and minor works of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Mill, Hirschmann establishes and examines the gender and class foundations of the modern understanding of freedom. Building on a social (...) constructivist model of freedom that she developed in her award-winning book The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom, she makes in her new book another original and important contribution to political and feminist theory. Despite the prominence of "state of nature" ideas in modern political theory, Hirschmann argues, theories of freedom actually advance a social constructivist understanding of humanity. By rereading "human nature" in light of this insight, Hirschmann uncovers theories of freedom that are both more historically accurate and more relevant to contemporary politics. Pigeonholing canonical theorists as proponents of either "positive" or "negative" liberty is historically inaccurate, she demonstrates, because theorists deploy both conceptions of freedom simultaneously throughout their work. (shrink)

A theoretical approach relying on quantum computation in microtubules within neurons can potentially resolve the enigmatic features of visual consciousness, but raises other questions. For example, how can delicate quantum states, which in the technological realm demand extreme cold and isolation to avoid environmental ‘decoherence’, manage to survive in the warm, wet brain? And if such states could survive within neuronal cell interiors, how could quantum states grow to encompass the whole brain? We present a physiological model for visual consciousness (...) that can accommodate brain-wide quantum computation according to the Penrose–Hameroff ‘Orch OR’ model. In this view, visual consciousness occurs as a series of several-hundred-millisecond epochs, each comprising ‘crescendo sequences’ of quantum computations occurring at ∼40 Hz. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors describe an aspect of a program of research around grief and clinical practice. The first phase of the study involves examination of experiences of grief with attention to troublesome or problematic beliefs that fuel the extent of suffering in the bereaved. The data, obtained from a review of videotaped clinical interviews with families seen in the Family Nursing Unit at the University of Calgary, were analyzed according to philosophical hermeneutic tradition. Findings suggest that grief is (...) an experience that is ongoing, that changes in nature over time, but that involves a continuing relationship with the deceased; it is a graceful, periodic, deliberate walk backwards while keeping a sure foot in living forward. (shrink)

Thought experiments have played a prominent role in numerous cases of conceptual change in science. I propose that research in cognitive psychology into the role of mental modeling in narrative comprehension can illuminate how and why thought experiments work. In thought experimenting a scientist constructs and manipulates a mental simulation of the experimental situation. During this process, she makes use of inferencing mechanisms, existing representations, and general world knowledge to make realistic transformations from one possible physical state to the next. (...) The simulation reveals the impossibility of integrating multiple constraints drawn from existing representations and the world and pinpoints the locus of the required conceptual reform. (shrink)

Nursing on paper: therapeutic letters in nursing practice This paper offers a selected piece of interpretive research extracted from the context of a larger research study. The hermeneutic research inquiry described in this paper involved the examination of the nursing and family therapy intervention of therapeutic letters. It incorporated the textual interpretation of 11 therapeutic letters, clinical sessions with three families, clinical team discussions, and research interviews with four family members and three nurse clinicians who participated in the writing of (...) the letters. This particular paper extracts segments of the research related to the letters received by two participants, as well as some general findings, with a focus on the possibilities and influences of therapeutic letters in nursing practice. The findings of this research offer suggestions, not as a template, but as an inspiration and evocation to write therapeutic letters that address the obligation of meeting people experiencing illness at the point of their suffering, with words and questions that invite relationship, reflection, and are large enough to sustain a meeting. (shrink)

Cognition in work teams has been predominantly understood and explained in terms of shared cognition with a focus on the similarity of static knowledge structures across individual team members. Inspired by the current zeitgeist in cognitive science, as well as by empirical data and pragmatic concerns, we offer an alternative theory of team cognition. Interactive Team Cognition (ITC) theory posits that (1) team cognition is an activity, not a property or a product; (2) team cognition should be measured and studied (...) at the team level; and (3) team cognition is inextricably tied to context. There are implications of ITC for theory building, modeling, measurement, and applications that make teams more effective performers. (shrink)

Globalization, an outgrowth of technology, while informing us about people throughout the world, also raises our awareness of the extreme economic and social disparities that exist among nations. As part of a global discipline, nurses are vitally interested in reducing and eliminating disparities so that better health is achieved for all people. Recent literature in nursing encourages our discipline to engage more actively with social justice issues. Justice in health care is a major commitment of nursing; thus questions in the (...) larger sphere of globalization, justice and ethics, are our discipline's questions also. Global justice, or fairness, is not an issue for some groups or institutions, but a deeper human rights issue that is a responsibility for everyone. What can we do to help reduce or eliminate the social and economic disparities that are so evident? What kind of ethical milieu is needed to address the threat that globalization imposes on justice and fairness? This article enriches the conceptualization of globalization by investigating recent work by Schweiker and Twiss. In addition, I discuss five qualities or characteristics that will facilitate the development of a viable and just global ethic. A global ethic guides all people in their response to human rights and poverty. Technology and business, two major forces in globalization that are generally considered beneficial, are critiqued as barriers to social justice and the common good. To turn human nature into humanity and righteousness is like turning the willow into cups and bowls.The book of Mencius. (shrink)

Robert Sparrow has recently claimed that unless there are reasons to think the sexed nature of human beings is normatively significant, current trends in bioethical reasoning force the conclusion that “we may do well to move toward a ‘post sex’ humanity” (American Journal of Bioethics 10: 7 (2010)). This commentary uses basic methodological principles from feminist ethics to argue that he has, in fact, given no reasons to think that a 'post sex' humanity is any more valuable than gender diverse (...) one, and no reason to think that sexual dimorphism has normative significance as a brute biological fact. (shrink)

Character structures underlie everyone’s personality. When rigidly defended, they limit us; yet as they become more flexible, they can reveal sources of animation, renewal and authenticity. _The Matrix and Meaning of Character_ guides the reader into an awareness of the archetypal depths that underlie character structures, presenting an original developmental model in which current analytic theories are synthesised. The authors examine nine character structures, animating them with fairy tales, mythic images and case material, creating a bridge between the traditional language (...) of psychopathology and the universal realm of image and symbol. This book will appeal to all analytical psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists who want to strengthen their clinical expertise. It will help clinicians to extend their clinical insights beyond a strictly behavioural, medical or cognitive approach, revealing the potential of the human spirit. (shrink)

This concluding essay offers reflections on core components of the faculty fellowship program, its outcomes and results, and program design and administration. Amid the current calls for reform in legal and other professional education, the lessons we learned and perspectives we gained during this fellowship program may be relevant to any faculty members and university administrations that are seeking to create more effective and engaged professional and graduate school programs, whatever may be their subject-matter discipline.

Designing, building, and experimenting with physical simulation models are central problem‐solving practices in the engineering sciences. Model‐based simulation is an epistemic activity that includes exploration, generation and testing of hypotheses, explanation, and inference. This paper argues that to interpret and understand how these simulation models function in creating knowledge and technologies requires construing problem solving as accomplished by a researcher–artifact system. It draws on and further develops the framework of “distributed cognition” to interpret data collected in ethnographic and cognitive‐historical studies (...) of two biomedical engineering research laboratories, and articulates the notion of distributed model‐based cognition to answer the question posed in the title. (shrink)

Giere's assessment is that the cognitive sciences, especially cognitive psychology, have much to offer the philosophy of science as it attempts to develop theories of the growth, development, and change of scientific knowledge as human activities. Margolis produces a model of scientific change by drawing from recent work in the cognitive sciences and attempts to show how this model explains salient cases of conceptual change. While agreeing with Giere's assessment, I argue that Margolis provides the wrong model both for scientific (...) change and for how the interaction between cognitive science and philosophy of science should proceed. (shrink)

The paper frames interdisciplinary research as creating complex, distributed cognitive-cultural systems. It introduces and elaborates on the method of cognitive ethnography as a primary means for investigating interdisciplinary cognitive and learning practices in situ. The analysis draws from findings of nearly 20 years of investigating such practices in research laboratories in pioneering bioengineering sciences. It examines goals and challenges of two quite different kinds of integrative problem-solving practices: biomedical engineering (hybridization) and integrative systems biology (collaborative interdependence). Practical lessons for facilitating (...) research and learning in these specific fields are discussed and a preliminary set of interdisciplinary epistemic virtues are proposed as candidates for cultivation in interdisciplinary practices of these kinds more widely. (shrink)

There is substantial evidence that traditional instructional methods have not been successful in helping students to restructure their commonsense conceptions and learn the conceptual structures of scientific theories. This paper argues that the nature of the changes and the kinds of reasoning required in a major conceptual restructuring of a representation of a domain are fundamentally the same in the discovery and in the learning processes. Understanding conceptual change as it occurs in science and in learning science will require the (...) development of a common cognitive model of conceptual change. The historical construction of an inertial representation of motion is examined and the potential instructional implications of the case are explored. (shrink)

Efforts to decrease errors in health care are directed at prevention rather than at managing a situation when a mistake has occurred. Consequently, nurses and other health care providers may not know how to respond properly and may lack sufficient support to make a healthy recovery from the mental anguish and emotional suffering that often accompany making mistakes. This article explores the conceptualization of mistakes and the ethical response to making a mistake. There are three parts to an ethical response (...) to error: disclosure, apology and amends. Honesty and humility are discussed as important virtues that facilitate coping and personal growth for the health care provider who is involved in mistakes. In conclusion, a healthy view of nursing practice and mistake making is one that prevents error but, when prevention is not possible, accepts fallibility as part of the human condition and achieves the best possible outcome for all. (shrink)