Neurological diseases, particularly in the context of aging, have serious impacts on quality of life and can negatively affect bone health. The brain-bone axis is critically important for skeletal metabolism, sensory innervation, and endocrine cross-talk between these organs. This review discusses current evidence for the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which various neurological disease categories, including autoimmune, developmental, dementia-related, movement, neuromuscular, stroke, trauma, and psychological, impart changes in bone homeostasis and mass, as well as fracture risk. Likewise, how bone may (...) affect neurological function is discussed. Gaining a better understanding of brain-bone interactions, particularly in patients with underlying neurological disorders, may lead to development of novel therapies and discovery of shared risk factors, as well as highlight the need for broad, whole-health clinical approaches toward treatment. (shrink)

The importance of witnessing broken narratives and somehow writing or representing these is matched by the challenges associated with trying to do this within a context of normativity and expected academic practice. We have to be convincing in our work, both in terms of rigour and dependability but also in terms of the way we make sense of the stories we are told. In this essay, I examine the narrative of John, a 63-year-old British man diagnosed with autism. I explore (...) how, by interrupting John’s narrative in search of the story I wanted and anticipated, I was disrupting his attempts to understand, form and reform his experiences within the interview setting. I argue we have a commitment to ignore the ‘rules’ of interviews and narrative in order to open up space for people to explore and make sense of their experiences beyond the tyranny of our research questions. (shrink)

Skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis are relatively prevalent health concerns in children, adolescents and young adults. Experiences of these dermatology diagnoses in adolescence have hitherto not been the focus of research, perhaps owing to assumptions that these diagnoses are not particularly impactful or intricate processes, events or labels. We draw on a thematic secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with 42 adolescents and young people living in the United Kingdom and, influenced by the sociologies of diagnosis and time, highlight (...) the psychological, emotional, social and temporal complexities involved in their diagnosis experiences. Firstly, we describe how participants remembered, re- and co-constructed their diagnosis experiences during the interview. Secondly, we explore the pace and rhythm of diagnosis, including mis-diagnoses, highlighting the jarring potential for adolescents on being diagnosed, even for conditions typically deemed minor. Thirdly, we consider the ways in which these diagnoses have the capacity to reformulate notions of past, present and future, including projecting into imagined futures and reinterpreting past bodily sensations. Finally, we examine how memories about and the meaning of diagnosis are revisited, revised and potentially replaced as a child or adolescent grows older, and increases their management of their condition and encounters with healthcare professionals. In unsettling an assumption that diagnosis experiences for adolescents of common skin conditions is unproblematic or straightforward, our qualitative analysis critically engages with and contribute to tenets of health research that are of interest to quantitative and qualitative researchers, clinicians and patients. (shrink)

This essay assesses the value of social constructivist theories of science to the history of medicine. It highlights particularly the ways in which feminist theorists have turned their attention to gender as a category of analysis in scientific thinking, producing an approach to modern science that asks how it became identified with "male" objectivity, reason, and mind, set in opposition to "female" subjectivity, feeling, and nature.In the history of medicine this new work has allowed a group of scholars to better (...) explain not only how women were marginalized in the profession but also the manner in which politics, male anxiety about shifts in power relations between the sexes, social and political upheaval, professional concerns, and changes in the family all had an impact on the production of knowledge regarding the female body, including the "discovery," definition, and treatment of a wide range of female ailments, from anorexia nervosa to fibroid tumors.Building on the work in the history of medicine already accomplished, the essay offers a critical rereading of the writings of Elizabeth Blackwell, a pioneer nineteenth-century woman physician and leader of the woman's medical movement. It contends that Blackwell, who lived through a revolutionary change in medical thinking brought on by discoveries in immunology and bacteriology, remained critical of "objectivity" as the "best" form of knowing and suspicious of the laboratory medicine that promoted it so enthusiastically. Moreover, her critiques of radical objectivity and scientific reductionism deserve to be recognized as foreshadowing the maternalist strain of thinking among contemporary feminist philosophers and thinkers such as Sara Ruddick and others. (shrink)

A general method for generating contraction- and cut-free sequent calculi for a large family of normal modal logics is presented. The method covers all modal logics characterized by Kripke frames determined by universal or geometric properties and it can be extended to treat also Gödel-Löb provability logic. The calculi provide direct decision methods through terminating proof search. Syntactic proofs of modal undefinability results are obtained in the form of conservativity theorems.

Omissions – any events, actions, or things that do not occur – are central to numerous debates in causation and ethics. This article surveys views on what omissions are, whether they are causally efficacious, and how they ground moral responsibility.

In this article I will introduce and outline the concept of resistance as it relates to health and healthcare. Starting with a number of examples of action, I will then turn to the broader literature to discuss some conventional definitions and related concepts, outlining debates, controversies and limitations related to conceptualizing resistance. I conceptualize resistance broadly, as any act, performed by any individual (or collective) acting as or explicitly identifying as a healthcare professional, that is a response to power, most (...) often in opposition to contentious, harmful or unjust rules, practices, policies or structures. Practically this could account for any public action, marches, sit‐ins and civil disobedience, but also forms of ‘everyday resistance’, such as working slowly, feigning sickness, or even providing care for marginalized groups that would otherwise not have access. Such action could go unrecognized by those in power and perhaps more contentiously, those resisting needn’t even recognize their actions as resistance. I will then apply this conceptualization to explain action that has been undertaken by healthcare professionals, identifying its key features. I will briefly discuss future directions for inquiry that appear particularly pressing. These including ongoing conceptual development, identifying the functions of resistance in health and healthcare along with what makes it distinct from healthcare as usual and other forms of resistance and finally, the range of normative questions resistance raises. (shrink)

This paper attempts to describe and address a specific puzzle related to compositionality in artificial networks such as Deep Neural Networks and machine learning in general. The puzzle identified here touches on a larger debate in Artificial Intelligence related to epistemic opacity but specifically focuses on computational applications of human level linguistic abilities or properties and a special difficulty with relation to these. Thus, the resulting issue is both general and unique. A partial solution is suggested.

What is love? In this paper I argue that love is a psychological syndrome, or an enormously complex cluster of psychological attitudes and dispositions that’s accompanied by a corresponding set of symptoms that flow from it. More specifically, I argue that love is an affectionate loyalty that takes different shapes across cases and that manifests itself in some set of behavioral and emotional expressions, where this set of expressions also varies across cases. After laying down three theoretical constraints that viable (...) theories of love must satisfy, I sketch my syndrome theory of love in detail and then defend it. First, I argue that it has a strong yet defeasible claim to satisfying the three theoretical constraints. Then I defend my theory against two objections that target its extensional adequacy. I conclude that we have good grounds for being optimistic about the theory even though it calls for further development and scrutiny. (shrink)

A comprehensive examination of Kristeva's work from the seventies to the nineties.

The thematic focus of this yearbook is concerned with the various relations of „art“ and „technology“. It seeks to interrogate and reflect their conceptual filiations, their complementarities and mutual stimulations, and contrasts and tensions. The very notion of the „work“ challenges us to explode or triangulate the dichotomy of art and technology. This connects to further problems in and for the philosophy of technology, such as the relation of arts and crafts, the question of Kitsch or camp in art and (...) technology, or the role of play as a basic modality of artful technical production. Finally, of course, comes design, packaging, marketing and the aesthetic effects of works. With contributions by Katrin Becker, Rainer Becker, Andreas Beinsteiner, Hans Blumenberg, Johanna Dombois, Daniel Martin Feige, Nico Formanek, Petra Gehring, Sebastian Hallensleben, Andreas Hauschke, Dawid Kasprowicz, Viet Anh Nguyen Duc, Regina Oehler, Anika Reineke, Dirk Rustemeyer, Bernhard Siebert, Larissa Ullmann, Claudia Wiesemann, Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow and Konstanze Wolter. (shrink)

Just as we may ask whether, and under what conditions, a collection of objects composes a single object, we may ask whether, and under what conditions, a collection of actions composes a single action. In the material objects literature, this question is known as the "special composition question," and I take it that there is a similar question to be asked of collections of actions. I will call that question the "special composition question in action," and argue that the correct (...) answer to this question depends on a particular kind of consequence produced by the individual constituent actions. (shrink)

As Josef Pieper writes in his study “On Hope,” the virtue of hope is the virtue that completes the human being in its intermediary, temporal state (the “status viatoris,” or condition of being “on the way”). To be human is always to be “on the way” toward a fulfillment and completion not yet available to it (the “status comprehensoris”). Those who are hopeful direct themselves toward this end as to their fulfillment despite recognizing that it, in some sense, exceeds their (...) grasp, whereas those who are not hopeful either reject the possibility of such a fulfillment (despair) or prematurely suppose themselves to have attained it (presumption). While Pieper’s account of hope is largely based on the theologically-inflected account found in Thomas Aquinas, Pieper draws his conception of the nature of philosophy and philosophical reasoning ultimately from Plato. Philosophy, for Plato, on Pieper’s view, is essentially structured by the “not yet” condition that Pieper calls the status viatoris, as we see mythically depicted in Diotima’s account of Eros as being an intermediary daimon who, partaking of his parents’ opposed natures, is fundamentally characterized by poverty and lack (the “not”) on the one hand and by resourcefulness (the “yet”) on the other. The human soul, erotic at its very core, is structured by this twofold relation to the object of its greatest longing, Beauty Itself, which it doesn’t yet possess but for which it strives with all of its being. In this essay, I show that Plato has a “hopeful” sense of reason on account of the erotic condition (the status viatoris) that essentially characterizes the human soul’s spatio-temporal life during its incarnate, earthly state. If reason is, for Plato, to be true to itself, it must strive for the whole of wisdom even as it lacks that wisdom. Because reason is directed toward a fulfillment it can’t quite fathom, it must relate to that fulfillment essentially in the mode of hope. When, by contrast, reason becomes presumptuous, thinking that it already has a clear and secure cognition of the truth for which it seeks, it becomes dogmatic and runs the risk of falling into the misology diagnosed in the Phaedo when it inevitably comes up against some crack in its understanding. Likewise, when reason succumbs to despair—as we see, for example, in Meno’s eristic argument about the impossibility of learning—it becomes excessively skeptical and inert. Only when reason avoids the twin errors of presumption and despair can it continue in its pursuit of the whole of wisdom while remaining mindful of its limitations. (shrink)

This article analyses some of the governmental issues at stake in contemporary institutional politics in its confrontation with the challenges of digitalisation. Through notions such as algorithmic governmentality (Rouvroy and Berns), platformisation (Bratton, Stiegler), extractivism, and the affect theory (Massumi), and following a symptomatologic method, we will try to establish and discuss some key points that could be useful in order to update certain concepts regarding micro- and biopolitics (Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault), the public sphere, and the management of social (...) and individual bodies. Finally, we will try to understand how the manipulation of affects via the staging of possible catastrophic futures (Parisi) is used as a powerful neurosensory weapon, with performative effects for governing and modelling behaviours. If contemporary capitalism is capable of abstracting and extracting affects, of accumulating them and of creating value through this, which policies should we apply in this situation of uncertainty and of the manipulation of affectivity? Is there any place left for public institutions, or is the market the sole political actor left? (shrink)

Artificial intelligent (AI) systems that perform image classification tasks are being used to great success in many application contexts. However, many of these systems are opaque, even to experts. This lack of understanding can be problematic for ethical, legal, or practical reasons. The research field Explainable AI (XAI) has therefore developed several approaches to explain image classifiers. The hope is to bring about understanding, e.g., regarding why certain images are classified as belonging to a particular target class. Most of these (...) approaches use visual explanations. Drawing on Elgin’s work (True enough. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2017), I argue that analyzing what those explanations exemplify can help to assess their suitability for producing understanding. More specifically, I suggest to distinguish between two forms of examples according to their suitability for producing understanding. I call these forms samples and exemplars, respectively. Samples are prone to misinterpretation and thus carry the risk of leading to misunderstanding. Exemplars, by contrast, are intentionally designed or chosen to meet contextual requirements and to mitigate the risk of misinterpretation. They are thus preferable for bringing about understanding. By reviewing several XAI approaches directed at image classifiers, I show that most of them explain with samples. If my analysis is correct, it will be beneficial if such explainability methods use explanations that qualify as exemplars. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence ethics requires a united approach from policymakers, AI companies, and individuals, in the development, deployment, and use of these technologies. However, sometimes discussions can become fragmented because of the different levels of governance or because of different values, stakeholders, and actors involved. Recently, these conflicts became very visible, with such examples as the dismissal of AI ethics researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru from Google and the resignation of whistle-blower Frances Haugen from Facebook. Underpinning each debacle was a conflict between (...) the organisation’s economic and business interests and the morals of their employees. This paper will examine tensions between the ethics of AI organisations and the values of their employees, by providing an exploration of the AI ethics literature in this area, and a qualitative analysis of three workshops with AI developers and practitioners. Common ethical and social tensions will be discussed, along with proposals on how to avoid or reduce these conflicts in practice. Altogether, we suggest the following steps to help reduce ethical issues within AI organisations: improved and diverse ethics education and training within businesses; internal and external ethics auditing; the establishment of AI ethics ombudsmen, AI ethics review committees and an AI ethics watchdog; as well as access to trustworthy AI ethics whistle-blower organisations. (shrink)

When we raise children what we are typically aiming for is a kind of flourishing; we want childrento live well as children, and to grow to become adults who live well too. Undoubtedly, part of what we are aiming forwhen we aim for a child’s flourishing is that they meet their developmental milestones well, and that they succeedamong their peers. We are also generally interested in how a child regards themselves; we want children tobelieve that they have value, and that (...) what they care about has value too. We also typically want children to havean appreciation for their relative value among others; that they are important among many other important beings,and we want them to act well in that knowledge. Of course, not all persons who raise children aim for those ends.Some do not care for how a child conceives of themselves, or whether the child flourishes at all. Others care fortheir children, and how they conceive of themselves, but aim poorly. As result, some children come to believe thatthey only deserve love and kindness when they succeed at meeting a caregiver’s ends. Some children come tobelieve that they have no worth at all. And yet other children, rather than believing they are unworthy, come toregard themselves as of superior worth; as children, for example, who bully and sneer at other children for being adifferent race, a different class, gender, ability, etc. may. When a child comes to understand themselves in theseterms, we typically see it at best as morally problematic, and at worst as a tragedy. Despite our interest inchildren’s self-conceptions, and the vast literature on how to conceive of and regard children, there is relatively littleregarding how children should conceive of and regard themselves. In order to explain how children shouldconceive of themselves it is my contention that a new account of self-respect is needed for the context of childhood;one that is responsive to the moral value of children, as well as their developmental capacities to recognize thatvalue. Given that developmental psychology is complex and subject to significant variation as children develop, myaim in this paper is to offer a snapshot of what I take self-respect to amount to in early childhood. In particular, Ifocus on an account fitting for children between three to six years of age. (shrink)

What do the terms sex and gender identity, or gender history, mean in a medical context? When does it matter to a healthcare professional whether a patient has male or female reproductive biology?...

There are two intriguing paradoxes in molecular biology-the inconsistent relationship between organismal complexity and (1) cellular DNA content and (2) the number of protein-coding genes-referred to as the C-value and G-value paradoxes, respectively. The C-value paradox may be largely explained by varying ploidy. The G-value paradox is more problematic, as the extent of protein coding sequence remains relatively static over a wide range of developmental complexity. We show by analysis of sequenced genomes that the relative amount of non-protein-coding sequence increases (...) consistently with complexity. We also show that the distribution of introns in complex organisms is non-random. Genes composed of large amounts of intronic sequence are significantly overrepresented amongst genes that are highly expressed in the nervous system, and amongst genes downregulated in embryonic stem cells and cancers. We suggest that the informational paradox in complex organisms may be explained by the expansion of cis-acting regulatory elements and genes specifying trans-acting non-protein-coding RNAs. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer an analysis of ‘group intentions.’ On our proposal, group intentions should be understood as a state of equilibrium among the beliefs of the members of a group. Although the discussion in this paper is non-technical, the equilibrium concept is drawn from the formal theory of interactive epistemology due to Robert Aumann. The goal of this paper is to provide an analysis of group intentions that is informed by important work in economics and formal epistemology.

The origins of proof-theoretic semantics lie in the question of what constitutes the meaning of the logical connectives and its response: the rules of inference that govern the use of the connective. However, what if we go a step further and ask about the meaning of a proof as a whole? In this paper we address this question and lay out a framework to distinguish sense and denotation of proofs. Two questions are central here. First of all, if we have (...) two different derivations, does this always lead to a difference, firstly, in sense, and secondly, in denotation? The other question is about the relation between different kinds of proof systems with respect to this distinction. Do the different forms of representing a proof necessarily correspond to a difference in how the inferential steps are given? In our framework it will be possible to identify denotation as well as sense of proofs not only within one proof system but also between different kinds of proof systems. Thus, we give an account to distinguish a mere syntactic divergence from a divergence in meaning and a divergence in meaning from a divergence of proof objects analogous to Frege’s distinction for singular terms and sentences. (shrink)

We examined how children's strategy choices in solving complex subtraction problems are related to grade and to variations in problem complexity. In two studies, third- and fifth-grade children (N≈160 each study) solved multi-digit subtraction problems (e.g., 34–18) and described their solution strategies. In the first experiment, strategy selection was investigated by means of a free-choice paradigm, whereas in the second study a discrete-choice approach was implemented. In both experiments, analyses of strategy repertoire indicated that third-grade children were more likely to (...) report less-efficient strategies (i.e., counting) and relied more on the right-to-left solution algorithm compared to fifth-grade children who more often used efficient memory-based retrieval and conceptually-based left-to-right (i.e., decomposition) strategies. Nevertheless, all strategies were reported or selected by both older and younger children and strategy use varied with problem complexity and presentation format for both age groups. These results supported the overlapping waves model of strategy development and provide detailed information about patterns of strategy choice on complex subtraction problems. (shrink)

To say Early Confucians advocated the possession of a sense of shame as a means to moral virtue underestimates the tact and forethought they used successfully to mold natural dispositions to experience shame into a system of self, familial, and social governance. Shame represents an adaptive system of emotion, cognition, perception, and behavior in social primates for measurement of social rank. Early Confucians understood the utility of the shame system for promotion of cooperation, and they build and deploy cultural modules (...) – e.g., rituals, titles, punishments – with this in mind. These policies result in subtle alterations to components of the evolved shame system that are detectable in data form contemporary cross-cultural psychology that show that populations in the Confucian diaspora have a unique shame profile compared to Western and non-Western populations. The status of Confucian diaspora populations as outliers in the context of shame is partially explained by appeal to the cultural transmission and historical endurance of relevant Early Confucian cultural modules. (shrink)

A constructive definition of the continuum based on formal topology is given and its basic properties studied. A natural notion of Cauchy sequence is introduced and Cauchy completeness is proved. Other results include elementary proofs of the Baire and Cantor theorems. From a classical standpoint, formal reals are seen to be equivalent to the usual reals. Lastly, the relation of real numbers as a formal space to other approaches to constructive real numbers is determined.

van Fraassen's constructivist empiricist account of theories makes an epistemic distinction between entities that can and cannot be observed with the naked eye. A belief about the correctness of a theoretical description of an entity that is observable with the naked eye can be warranted by a theory. In contrast, no theory can warrant a belief about the correctness of a description of an unobservable entity. I argue that we ought to instead adopt a view that takes account of the (...) fact that some entities that cannot be observed with the naked eye can nevertheless be observed on the basis of the same physical principle as those entities that can be. This suggests that there is a distinction different from van Fraassen's that might do the work van Fraassen intends his to do, but a distinction that is principled. Understanding why this is so suggests that his distinction is grounded merely in human chauvinism. (shrink)

Given the current organ shortage, a prevalent alternative to the altruism-based policy is a market-based solution: pay people for their organs. Receiving much popular and scholarly attention, a salient normative argument against neoliberal pressures is the preservation of human dignity. This article examines how advocates of both the altruistic status quo and market challengers reason and weigh the central normative concept of dignity, meant as inherent worth and/or rank. Key rhetorical strategies, including motivations and broader social visions, of the two (...) positions are analyzed and evaluated, and the separation of morally normative understandings of dignity from market encroachment is defended. (shrink)

Decolonial/anti-colonial Black, Indigenous and Mestiza feminist movements and scholar-activists foreground how the oft-touted apocalypse that the Covid-19 pandemic heralds is not new, nor does it signify the great rupture into chaos that those from within modernity-coloniality often claim it to be. Rather Covid-19 is preceded by and will be out-lived by the apocalyptic anti-life onto-epistemological logics that are foundational to the (re)production of hetero-patriarchal capitalist-(settler) coloniality. However, one would commit the violence of reproduction of the epistemological logics and (ir)rationalities constitutive (...) of the current system if the story ended there. We have survived (despite our losses) and our survival points to the urgent necessity and responsibility of (critical) social theory to listen to the story of the pandemic from a Black/Indigenous genealogy and to begin the sense-making of the Covid-19 pandemic, from prior to this particular virus, outside, against and beyond the politics of knowledge of critical social theory itself. Thus, I invite you to journey to an affirmative re-enfleshment of reason and theory-making in relation to and dialogue with Black, Indigenous, and subaltern Mestiza feminist movements in southwest Colombia and in southeast so-called Australia in the unceded lands of the Awabakal and the Worimi. I explore this through the metaphor, the materiality, the cosmology and the herstory of the mangrove swamps a knowing-being otherwise (in)visible to the dehumanising gave of Whiteness and bring to thought three stories of a politics of knowledge of/as the Black/racialised and feminised body/flesh. To do this is to suggest that the co-creation of pathways which are life affirming and life making beyond and out of the post-Covid 19 conjuncture involves an epistemological-political project which decolonises and feminises the containments of reason and knowing (non)being of coloniality/modernity. (shrink)

This paper discusses the individuation of characters for the use asunits by geneticists at the beginning of the 20th century. Thediscussion involves the Presence and Absence Hypothesis as a case study. It issuggested that the gap between conceptual consideration and etiological factorsof individuating of characters is being handled by way of mutual adjustment.Confrontation of a suggested morphological unit character with experimentresults molded the final boundaries of it.

The medieval distinction between categorematic and syncategorematic words is usually given as the distinction between words which have signification or meaning in isolation from other words and those which have signification only when combined with other words . Some words, however, are classified as both categorematic and syncategorematic. One such word is Latin infinita ‘infinite’. Because infinita can be either categorematic or syncategorematic, it is possible to form sophisms using infinita whose solutions turn on the distinction between categorematic and syncategorematic (...) uses of infinita. As a result, medieval logicians were interested in identifying correct logical rules governing the categorematic and syncategorematic uses of the term. In this paper, we look at 13th–15th-century logical discussions of infinita used syncategorematically and categorematically. We also relate the distinction to other medieval distinctions with which it has often been conflated in modern times, and show how and where these conflations go wrong. (shrink)

The project is to traverse with quite novel questions, and as though with new eyes, the enormous, distant, and so well hidden land of morality—of morality that has actually existed, actually been lived.This essay offers a contribution to the consilience of the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences in accord with naturalism (in a spirit closer to Slingerland 2008 than Wilson 1998). Human beings have a shared nature produced by evolutionary history and modified by culture, where 'culture' refers to "information (...) capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission" (Richerson and Boyd 2005, p. 5). .. (shrink)

Current law in Victoria, Australia requires that all prospective assisted reproduction patients provide a criminal background check and child protection order check prior to being eligible for treatment. These presumptions against treatment stipulated in the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act are discriminatory against all people that are infertile. Requiring assistance in founding a family says nothing about whether someone will be a minimally decent parent to their child. The most plausible justifications for this differential treatment of family builders that require assistance (...) are unsound. The wellbeing of the resulting child is something that the prospective patient should be presumed to have at heart, as this is the default assumption with other kinds of family builders that do not require assistance. That assisted reproduction treatment is publicly funded does not mean that the state is thereby justified in putting moral conditions on access to treatment. As we should not accept discriminatory laws, especially about practices that are of fundamental importance to the lives of citizens, the presumptions against treatment stipulated in ARTA should be eradicated. (shrink)

The current trend in knowledge revision in the Dynamic Epistemic Logic tradition focuses on the addition of new knowledge, rather than the possibility of losing knowledge. Yet there are natural situations, such as an agent who does not want another agent to know that she knows a certain piece of information, where there is a need to be able to model the retraction of a proposition from a knowledge base. One situation where this is systematically required is the variant of (...) the medieval theory of obligationes known as dubitatio, where one of the agents in the dialogue is obliged to hold the initial proposition, the dubitatum, as doubtful, regardless of what other propositions she may concede or deny during the disputation. In this paper, we use dubitatio as a motivation for studying deceitful agents, and we discuss various ways that an agent can move from a model where f is known to one where f is not known. (shrink)

Achieving a good clinical trial design increases the likelihood that a trial will take place as planned, including that data will be obtained from a sufficient number of participants, and the total number of participants will be the minimal required to gain the knowledge sought. A good trial design also increases the likelihood that the knowledge sought by the experiment will be forthcoming. Achieving such a design is more than good sense—it is ethically required in experiments when participants are at (...) risk of harm. This paper argues that doing a power analysis effectively contributes to ensuring that a trial design is good. The ethical importance of good trial design has long been recognized for trials in which there is risk of serious harm to participants. However, whether the quality of a trial design, when the risk to participants is only minimal, is an ethical issue is rarely discussed. This paper argues that even in cases when the risk is minimal, the quality of the trial design is an ethical issue, and that this is reflected in the emphasis the Belmont Report places on the importance of the benefit of knowledge gained by society. The paper also argues that good trial design is required for true informed consent. (shrink)

Background:Smart Aging is a serious game (SG) platform that generates a 3D virtual reality environment in which users perform a set of screening tasks designed to allow evaluation of global cognition. Each task replicates activities of daily living performed in a familiar environment. The main goal of the present study was to ascertain whether Smart Aging could differentiate between different types and levels of cognitive impairment in patients with neurodegenerative disease.Methods:Ninety-one subjects (mean age = 70.29 ± 7.70 years)—healthy older adults (...) (HCs,n= 23), patients with single-domain amnesic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI,n= 23), patients with single-domain executive Parkinson's disease MCI (PD-MCI,n= 20), and patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (mild AD,n= 25)—were enrolled in the study. All participants underwent cognitive evaluations performed using both traditional neuropsychological assessment tools, including the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Overall Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and the Smart Aging platform. We analyzed global scores on Smart Aging indices (i.e., accuracy, time, distance) as well as the Smart Aging total score, looking for differences between the four groups.Results:The findings revealed significant between-group differences in all the Smart Aging indices: accuracy (p< 0.001), time (p< 0.001), distance (p< 0.001), and total Smart Aging score (p< 0.001). The HCs outperformed the mild AD, aMCI, and PD-MCI patients in terms of accuracy, time, distance, and Smart Aging total score. In addition, the mild AD group was outperformed both by the HCs and by the aMCI and PD-MCI patients on accuracy and distance. No significant differences were found between aMCI and PD-MCI patients. Finally, the Smart Aging scores significantly correlated with the results of the neuropsychological assessments used.Conclusion:These findings, although preliminary due to the small sample size, suggest the validity of Smart Aging as a screening tool for the detection of cognitive impairment in patients with neurodegenerative diseases. (shrink)

Implanted medical devices—for example, cardiac defibrillators, deep brain stimulators, and insulin pumps—offer users the possibility of regaining some control over an increasingly unruly body, the opportunity to become part “cyborg” in service of addressing pressing health needs. We recognize the value and effectiveness of such devices, but call attention to what may be less clear to potential users—that their vulnerabilities may not entirely disappear but instead shift. We explore the kinds of shifting vulnerabilities experienced by people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) (...) who receive therapeutic deep brain stimulators to help control their tremors and other symptoms of PD. (shrink)

From a feminist perspective, unlimited procreative liberty risks treating children as property, distorts understanding of the family, and neglects moral concerns about how we reproduce.

The biological sciences provide ample opportunity and motivation for feminist interventions. These sciences are seen by many as an authority on human nature and are highly relevant to many issues of social justice and public policy. Feminist philosophy of biology focuses on the ethical and epistemic adequacy and responsibility of biological claims. This work is critical in the sense of identifying epistemically and ethically irresponsible knowledge claims, research practices, and dissemination of biological research regarding sex/gender, including ways that sex/gender interacts (...) with other social categories. In this chapter we describe classic themes in feminist philosophy of biology, with particular regard to research practices and metaphysical assumptions. We then go on to argue that these classic themes remain salient in contemporary neuroscientific investigations of human emotion and in feminist research on the evolution of human behavior. (shrink)