We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

Why read Leibniz today? Can we still learn from him and not just about him? This book argues that Leibniz offers a powerful, productive model for transdisciplinary thinking that can push back against the narrowness of the humanities today. Richard Halpern recasts Leibniz as a great writer as well as a great philosopher, demonstrating that his philosophical project cannot be fully understood without taking its literary elements into account. He shows Leibniz to be a prescient thinker about art and (...) beauty whose insights into the relationship between aesthetic experience and thought remain invaluable. Leibnizing asks readers to follow the dynamic movement of Leibniz’s writing instead of attempting to grasp a static philosophical system and to pay careful attention to the rhetorical and stylistic registers of Leibniz’s work as well as its conceptual and logical dimensions. For philosophers, this book offers a novel approach to reading and interpreting Leibniz. For literary and other theorists, it showcases the relevance of Leibniz’s thought to areas from aesthetics to politics and from metaphysics to computer science. Written in a lucid and even witty style, Leibnizing provides readers with an accessible entryway into Leibniz’s sometimes forbidding but ultimately rewarding philosophical vision. (shrink)

We propose new definitions of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion article. Essentially, an explanation is a fact that is not known for certain but, if found to be true, would constitute an actual cause of the fact to be explained, regardless of the agent's initial uncertainty. We show that the definition handles well a number of problematic examples from the literature.

Unrealistic therapeutic beliefs are very common—the majority of patient-subjects (up to 94%) enrol in phase 1 trials seeking and expecting significant medical benefit, even though the likelihood of such benefit has historically proven very low. The high prevalence of therapeutic misestimation and unrealistic optimism in particular has stimulated debate about whether unrealistic therapeutic beliefs in early-phase clinical trials preclude adequate informed consent. We seek here to help resolve this controversy by showing that a crucial determination of when such therapeutic beliefs (...) are ethically problematic turns on whether they are causally linked and instrumental to the motivation to participate in the trial. Thus, in practice, it is ethically incumbent on researchers to determine which understanding and beliefs lead to the participant’s primary motivation for enrolling, not to simply assess understanding, beliefs and motivations independently. We further contend that assessing patient-subjects’ appreciation as a component of informed consent—it is already an established component of decision-making capacity assessments—can help elucidate the link between understanding-beliefs and motivation; appreciation refers to an individual’s understanding of the personal significance of both the medical facts and the experience of trial participation. Therefore, we recommend that: (1) in addition to the usual question, ‘Why do you want to participate in this trial?’, all potential participants should be asked the question: ‘What are you giving up by participating in this trial?’ and (2) researchers should consider the settings in which it may be possible and practical to obtain ‘two-point consent’. (shrink)

Galles & Pearl (l998) claimed that s [possible-worlds] framework.s framework. Recursive models are shown to correspond precisely to a subclass of (possible-world) counterfactual structures. On the other hand, a slight generalization of recursive models, models where all equations have unique solutions, is shown to be incomparable in expressive power to counterfactual structures, despite the fact that the Galles and Pearl arguments should apply to them as well. The problem with the Galles and Pearl argument is identified: an axiom that they (...) viewed as irrelevant, because it involved disjunction (which was not in their language), is not irrelevant at all. (shrink)

In 1960, E. P. Wigner, a joint winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics, published a paper titled On the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences [61]. This paper can be construed as an examination and affirmation of Galileo's tenet that “The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics”. To this effect, Wigner presented a large number of examples that demonstrate the effectiveness of mathematics in accurately describing physical phenomena. Wigner viewed these examples as (...) illustrations of what he called the empirical law of epistemology, which asserts that the mathematical formulation of the laws of nature is both appropriate and accurate, and that mathematics is actually the correct language for formulating the laws of nature. At the same time, Wigner pointed out that the reasons for the success of mathematics in the natural sciences are not completely understood; in fact, he went as far as asserting that “… the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”. (shrink)

The field of science communication is plagued by challenges. Communicators face the difficulty of responding to unjustified public skepticism over issues like climate change and COVID-19 while also acknowledging the fallibility and limitations of scientific knowledge. Our goal in this paper is to suggest a new model for science communication that can help foster more productive, respectful relationships among all those involved in science communication. Inspired by the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey, we develop an experience model, according to which (...) science communication consists in people’s experiences with science and the meanings they develop from those experiences. Three principles are central to the model: experience is cumulative, context matters, and audiences have agency. We argue that this model has significant implications both for communication research and practice, which we illustrate by applying it to the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy. We show how science communicators can help to identify and alleviate structural factors that contribute to skepticism as well as fostering opportunities for meaning making around shared experiences. (shrink)

When the fuzzy indeterminacy of quantum mechanics overthrew the orderly world of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger were at the forefront of the revolution. Neither man was ever satisfied with the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, however, and both rebelled against what they considered the most preposterous aspect of quantum mechanics: its randomness. Einstein famously quipped that God does not play dice with the universe, and Schrödinger constructed his famous fable of a cat that was neither alive nor (...) dead not to explain quantum mechanics but to highlight the apparent absurdity of a theory gone wrong. But these two giants did more than just criticize: they fought back, seeking a Theory of Everything that would make the universe seem sensible again. In Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat, physicist Paul Halpern tells the little-known story of how Einstein and Schrödinger searched, first as collaborators and then as competitors, for a theory that transcended quantum weirdness. This story of their quest—which ultimately failed—provides readers with new insights into the history of physics and the lives and work of two scientists whose obsessions drove its progress. Today, much of modern physics remains focused on the search for a Theory of Everything. As Halpern explains, the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson makes the Standard Model—the closest thing we have to a unified theory— nearly complete. And while Einstein and Schrödinger failed in their attempt to explain everything in the cosmos through pure geometry, the development of string theory has, in its own quantum way, brought this idea back into vogue. As in so many things, even when they were wrong, Einstein and Schrödinger couldn’t help but get a great deal right. (shrink)

We consider a setting where a decision maker’s uncertainty is represented by a set of probability measures, rather than a single measure. Measure-by-measure updating of such a set of measures upon acquiring new information is well known to suffer from problems. To deal with these problems, we propose using weighted sets of probabilities: a representation where each measure is associated with a weight, which denotes its significance. We describe a natural approach to updating in such a situation and a natural (...) approach to determining the weights. We then show how this representation can be used in decision making, by modifying a standard approach to decision making—minimizing expected regret—to obtain minimax weighted expected regret. We provide an axiomatization that characterizes preferences induced by MWER both in the static and dynamic case. (shrink)

This collection of essays is a Festschrift for Ernest W. Adams, and is based on a symposium that was held in his honor in 1993. As the title suggests, most of the essays focus on probability and the logic of conditionals, and the relationship between them; they draw their inspiration from Adams’s seminal work on the subject. As a computer scientist, I was struck by just how much the topics discussed play a major role in much recent work in computer (...) science, and how relevant much recent work in computer science is to some of the issues discussed here. (shrink)

__Youth, Education, and the Role of Society_ examines the “learning landscape” currently available to American adolescents, arguing that we need to expand, enrich, and diversify the learning opportunities available to young people today._ Central to the book is Robert Halpern’s view that we depend too exclusively on schools to meet the full range of young people’s developmental needs. “High school learning as typically structured is just too fragmented, isolated, and abstract to meet young people’s developmental needs,” he argues. “It (...) relies too much on century-old curriculum and pedagogy, and is too oriented, in an unreflective way, toward preparing young people for four-year college.” As Halpern notes, school leaders are already aware of the limitations posed by traditional high schools and are aiming for reformed school institutions and curricula. However, he contends that “better meeting young people’s learning and developmental needs will require far more than a reconceptualized high school experience. It will mean a fundamentally different understanding of where learning can take place and the wholehearted participation of a variety of institutions and sectors of society.” The book’s initial chapters explore the nature of productive learning experiences for adolescents. The volume then looks at how various institutions—including schools, after-schools, businesses, and nonprofit and civic organizations—can make unique and indispensable contributions to those crucial learning experiences. Halpern also considers how other countries “structure learning” during these formative years, and he concludes with an exploration of the social and cultural challenges ahead—challenges we must meet, he argues, if we are to enlist and sustain the necessary participation of institutions and adults in an expanded and enriched program for preparing young people for adult life and success. A bold and wide-ranging effort to examine—and reimagine—learning and youth development, this book promises to be a major contribution to the literature on adolescent education. (shrink)

Principles are static; narratives move. They show us how people change; they depict character development and moral growth (or decline). They do this by pulling us inside lived time, where we empathize with a character's dilemmas about, and responsibility for, his or her future. This feature of narratives fits well with ethics, for ethics begins with practical questions about what to do or how to be (or even whether to be). Such questions require that one view the future as something (...) one has some freedom to shape. Narrative and principle‐based ethics support each other, and both are necessary, but in this essay I will focus on one side and consider how narrative dynamism enlivens a static bioethical principle, opening up new possibilities for moral action. (shrink)

Three notions of definability in multimodal logic are considered. Two are analogous to the notions of explicit definability and implicit definability introduced by Beth in the context of first-order logic. However, while by Beth’s theorem the two types of definability are equivalent for first-order logic, such an equivalence does not hold for multimodal logics. A third notion of definability, reducibility, is introduced; it is shown that in multimodal logics, explicit definability is equivalent to the combination of implicit definability and reducibility. (...) The three notions of definability are characterized semantically using (modal) algebras. The use of algebras, rather than frames, is shown to be necessary for these characterizations. (shrink)

More than 40 years ago, Gilbert Gottlieb and like-minded scholars argued for the philosophical necessity of approaching genetic contributions to development through a multilevel, bidirectional systems perspective. Charney's target article builds on this heritage in significant ways, offering more recent examples of the interactions of biology and context, as well as the diversity of developmental mechanisms, and reaffirming a way forward for genetic research.

In response to increasing use of practice guidelines in medicine, physicians have focused their attention on how these guidelines can restrict their medical practices. However, guidelines not only restrict physician discretion, but they also limit the treatment options available to patients. As a result, treatments which patients consider beneficial may not be recommended; for example, some hysterectomies for abnormal uterine bleeding, and cataract surgery in patients with dementia. When guidelines are used to determine which medical treatments a health care organization (...) or insurer will cover, these recommendations become restrictions. Thus far, guidelines have been developed without adequate attention to the impact that their restrictive use has on diverse patient values.Two significant tensions in current medical ethics relate to the inclusion of patient values in practice guidelines. First, a tension exists between the traditional paternalistic model of care, in which the physician judges unilaterally which treatments will benefit the patient, and the more recent autonomy model, in which the physician elicits the individual patient's health values to determine which treatments will be beneficial. (shrink)

Walter and Ross rightfully argue that healthcare providers need to employ a less authoritarian, more empowering approach if they want to support patients’ behavioral changes. They show how motivational interviewing (MI), informed by self-determination theory, engages patients and thus may inspire enduring changes. They ground these interventions in an important, new model of relational autonomy, emphasizing the patient’s self-respect and self-cohesion as well as self-determination, and they show how patient–provider interactions influence these three aspects of autonomy. It may be surprising (...) then, that in the first part of this essay, I argue that it is problematic for them to ground their empowerment model in the .. (shrink)

The prediction of general relativity on the gravitational collapse of matter ending in a point is viewed as an absurdity of the kind to be expected in any consistent physical theory due to ultimate conflicts of the axioms of geometry with the properties of physical objects. The necessity to introduce a probability interpretation for the solution of partial differential equations in space time for quantum theory points to similar roots. It is pointed out that quantum theory in the very small (...) is not going to eliminate the problem, but macroscopic quantum effects in the large, modifying the properties of the horizon, may achieve it. Solutions such as wormholes allow as much empirical evidence as any science fiction. The present approach considers successive modifications of the field equations and equations of motion of gravitational theory by admixture of terms with higher derivatives. The rigorous application of a gauge principle combines Einstein's equations with the tensor analog of Maxwell's equations which are of third order for the metric. It is speculated that the natural presence of torsion in such a gauge theory is related to matter sources. (shrink)

The requirement to present Dirac's Large Number Hypothesis in one system of units in which the resulting modifications to Einstein's theory are exhibited, led to the construction of generalizations of General Relativity based rigorously on the geometry of semisimple groups. The foundations of such a theory are discussed and some of their possible interpretations are presented.

Three notions of definability in multimodal logic are considered. Two are analogous to the notions of explicit definability and implicit definability introduced by Beth in the context of first-order logic. However, while by Beth’s theorem the two types of definability are equivalent for first-order logic, such an equivalence does not hold for multimodal logics. A third notion of definability, reducibility, is introduced; it is shown that in multimodal logics, explicit definability is equivalent to the combination of implicit definability and reducibility. (...) The three notions of definability are characterized semantically using algebras. The use of algebras, rather than frames, is shown to be necessary for these characterizations. (shrink)

Although Geary's partitioning of mathematical abilities into those that are biologically primary and secondary is an advance over most sociobiological theories of cognitive sex differences, it remains untestable and ignores the spatial nature of women's traditional work. An alternative model based on underlying cognitive processes offers other advantages.

The author, who was Schrödinger's assistant during his last years in Vienna, gives an account of Schrödinger's views and activities during that time which lead him to a different approach to research on the relations between gravitation and quantum phenomena. Various features of past research are outlined in nontechnical terms. A heuristic argument is presented for the role of the zero-point energy of massive particles in counteracting gravitational collapse and the formation of horizons. Arguments are presented for the view that (...) progress in describing extreme gravitational phenomena can be achieved by the new outlook obtained from the introduction of the analog of Maxwell's vacuum displacement term with a quasiconstant parameter, rather than from renormalization of special processes, even if this is successful. The results can be expected to be in accord with Schrödinger's conjectures.A physical interpretation for the change of sign of the differential invariant of Karlhede, Lindström, and Åman at the horizon is suggested.Some important historical details about Schrödinger are touched upon. (shrink)

During public health crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, resource scarcity and contagion risks may require health systems to shift—to some degree—from a usual clinical ethic, focused on the well-being of individual patients, to a public health ethic, focused on population health. Many triage policies exist that fall under the legal protections afforded by “crisis standards of care,” but they have key differences. We critically appraise one of the most fundamental differences among policies, namely the use of criteria to categorically exclude (...) certain patients from eligibility for otherwise standard medical services. We examine these categorical exclusion criteria from ethical, legal, disability, and implementation perspectives. Focusing our analysis on the most common type of exclusion criteria, which are disease-specific, we conclude that optimal policies for critical care resource allocation and the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) should not use categorical exclusions. We argue that the avoidance of categorical exclusions is often practically feasible, consistent with public health norms, and mitigates discrimination against persons with disabilities. (shrink)

The success of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for movement disorders and the improved understanding of the neurobiologic and neuroanatomic bases of psychiatric diseases have led to proposals to expand current DBS applications. Recent preclinical and clinical work with Alzheimer's disease and obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example, supports the safety of stimulating regions in the hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens in humans. These regions are known to be involved in addiction and overeating associated with obesity. However, the use of DBS targeting these areas (...) as a treatment modality raises common ethical considerations, which include informed consent, coercion, enhancement, threat to personhood, and manipulation of the reward center. Pilot studies for both of these conditions are currently investigational. If these studies show promise, then there is a need to address the ethical concerns related to the initiation of clinical trials including the reliability of preclinical evidence, patient selection, study design, compensation for participation and injury, cost-effectiveness, and the need for long-term follow-up. Multidisciplinary teams are necessary for the ethical execution of such studies. In addition to establishing safety and efficacy, the consideration of these ethical issues is vital to the adoption of DBS as a treatment for these conditions. We offer suggestions about the pursuit of future clinical trials of DBS for the treatment of addiction and overeating associated with obesity and provide a framework for addressing ethical concerns related to treatment. (shrink)

Professor Judea Pearl won the 2011 Turing Award "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning." This book contains the original articles that led to the award, as well as other seminal works, divided into four parts: heuristic search, probabilistic reasoning, causality, first period (1988-2001), and causality, recent period (2002-2020). Each of these parts starts with an introduction written by Judea Pearl. The volume also contains original, contributed articles by leading researchers (...) that analyze, extend, or assess the influence of Pearl's work in different fields: from AI, Machine Learning, and Statistics to Cognitive Science, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences. The first part of the volume includes a biography, a transcript of his Turing Award Lecture, two interviews, and a selected bibliography annotated by him. (shrink)

Good scientific research depends on critical thinking at least as much as factual knowledge; psychology is no exception to this rule. And yet, despite the importance of critical thinking, psychology students are rarely taught how to think critically about the theories, methods, and concepts they must use. This book shows students and researchers how to think critically about key topics such as experimental research, statistical inference, case studies, logical fallacies, and ethical judgments. Using updated research findings and new insights, this (...) volume provides a comprehensive overview of what critical thinking is and how to teach it in psychology. Written by leading experts in critical thinking in psychology, each chapter contains useful pedagogical features, such as critical-thinking questions, brief summaries, and definitions of key terms. It also supplies descriptions of each chapter author's critical-thinking experience, which evidences how critical thinking has made a difference to facilitating career development. (shrink)