The stimulant “benefits” of amphetamine and its derivative, methamphetamine, have endured since the drugs first became popular nearly a century ago. The concepts of increasing energy for functional purposes related to work and productivity have been well studied. However, the broader idea of increased alertness, and what this means in the lives of users, has not yet been sufficiently examined. This article draws from ongoing research with active methamphetamine users to explore the perceived benefits, drawbacks, and meanings of remaining alert—awake (...) and vigilant—while most of the world sleeps. The experiences of several users are situated in the contexts of sociostructural and mental health issues that shape cycles of use and meanings of addiction. (shrink)

Under the umbrella of the burgeoning neurotransdisciplines, scholars are using the principles and research methodologies of their primary and secondary fields to examine developments in neuroimaging, neuromodulation and psychopharmacology. The path for advanced scholarship at the intersection of law and neuroscience may clear if work across the disciplines is collected and reviewed and outstanding and debated issues are identified and clarified. In this article, I organize, examine and refine a narrow class of the burgeoning neurotransdiscipline scholarship; that is, scholarship at (...) the interface of law and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). (shrink)

BackgroundPersonal health information and biospecimens are valuable research resources essential for the advancement of medicine and protected by national standards and provincial statutes. Research ethics and privacy standards attempt to balance individual interests with societal interests. However these standards may not reflect public opinion or preferences. The purpose of this study was to assess the opinions and preferences of patients with kidney disease about the use of their health information and biospecimens for medical research.MethodsA 45-item survey was distributed to a (...) convenience sample of patients at an outpatient clinic in a large urban centre. The survey briefly addressed sociodemographic and illness characteristics. Opinions were sought on the research use of health information and biospecimens including consent preferences.ResultsTwo hundred eleven of 400 distributed surveys were completed. Respondents were generally supportive of medical research and trusting of researchers. Many respondents supported the use of their information and biospecimens for health research and also preferred consent be sought for use of health information and biospecimens. Some supported the use of their information and biospecimens for research without consent. There were significant differences in the opinions people offered regarding the research use of biospecimens compared to health information. Some respondent perspectives about consent were at odds with current regulatory and legal standards.ConclusionsClinical health data and biospecimens are valuable research resources, critical to the advancement of medicine. Use of these data for research requires balancing respect for individual autonomy, privacy and the societal interest in the greater good. Incongruence between some respondent perspectives and the regulatory standards suggest both a need for public education and review of legislation to increase understanding and ensure the public’s trust is maintained. (shrink)

Ethics review of research involving humans has become something of an institution in recent years. It is intended to protect participants from harm and, to that end, follows rigorous standards. Giv...

BackgroundResearch Ethics Boards, or Institutional Review Boards, protect the safety and welfare of human research participants. These bodies are responsible for providing an independent evaluation of proposed research studies, ultimately ensuring that the research does not proceed unless standards and regulations are met.Main bodyConcurrent with the growing volume of human participant research, the workload and responsibilities of Research Ethics Boards (REBs) have continued to increase. Dissatisfaction with the review process, particularly the time interval from submission to decision, is common within (...) the research community, but there has been little systematic effort to examine REB processes that may contribute to inefficiencies. We offer a model illustrating REB workflow, stakeholders, and accountabilities.ConclusionBetter understanding of the components of the research ethics review will allow performance targets to be set, problems identified, and solutions developed, ultimately improving the process. (shrink)

In Tanzania, the encounter between a traditional malady called degedege and the modern malady malaria is a fight to participate in the making of the bodies of women and children as well as the agents that afflict them. In their respective settings,degedege and malaria are considered two of the most common threats to the well-being of pregnant women and their young children. Local, national, and international public-health concerns for the early treatment of malaria compel biomedical practitioners to claim that degedege (...) is malaria. This article explores the power of this translation through an examination of the processes involved in treating degedege and the processes involved in treating malaria. I examine what is gained and what is lost through scientific or public health efforts to translate concepts, objects of practice, and agents of affliction from one form of care to another. (shrink)

_The Infrastructure of Accountability _brings together leading and emerging scholars who set forth an ambitious conceptual framework for understanding the full impact of large-scale, performance-based accountability systems on education. Over the past 20 years, schools and school systems have been utterly reshaped by the demands of test-based accountability. Interest in large-scale performance data has reached an unprecedented high point. Yet most education researchers focus primarily on questions of data quality and the effectiveness of data use. In this bold and thought-provoking (...) volume, the contributors look beneath the surface of all this activity to uncover the hidden infrastructure that supports the production, flow, and use of data in education, and explore the impact of these large-scale information systems on American schooling. These systems, the editors note, “sit at the juncture of technical networks, work practices, knowledge production, and moral order. (shrink)

Advances in science and technology frequently raise new ethical, legal, and social issues, and developments in neuroscience and neuroimaging technology are no exception. Within the field of neuroethics, leading scientists, ethicists, and humanists are exploring the implications of efforts to image, study, treat, and enhance the human brain.This article focuses on one aspect of neuroethics: the confidentiality and privacy implications of advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging. Following a brief orientation to fMRI and an overview of some of its current (...) and proposed uses, this article highlights key confidentiality and privacy issues raised by fMRI in the contexts of health care, research, employment, insurance, criminal justice, litigation, and cognitive privacy. (shrink)

This article examines the privacy and security issues associated with mobile application-mediated health research, concentrating in particular on research conducted or participated in by independent scientists, citizen scientists, and patient researchers. Building on other articles in this issue that examine state research laws and state data protection laws as possible sources of privacy and security protections for mobile research participants, this article focuses on the lack of application of federal standards to mobile application-mediated health research. As discussed in more detail (...) below, the voluminous and diverse data collected by some independent scientists who use mobile applications to conduct health research may be at risk for unregulated privacy and security breaches, leading to dignitary, psychological, and economic harms for which participants have few legally enforceable rights or remedies under current federal law. Federal lawmakers may wish to consider enacting new legislation that would require otherwise unregulated health data holders to implement reasonable data privacy, security, and breach notification measures. (shrink)

Advances in neuroscience have implications for criminal law as well as civil and regulatory law, including health, disability, and benefit law. The role of the behavioral and brain sciences in health insurance claims, the mental health parity debate, and disability proceedings is examined.

In the early 1970s, Congress considered enacting comprehensive privacy legislation, but it was unable to do so. In 1974, it passed the Privacy Act, applicable only to information in the possession of the federal government. In the intervening years, other information privacy laws enacted by Congress, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, have been weak and sector specific. With the explosion of information technology and the growing concerns about an absence of effective federal privacy laws, the legal (...) focus has shifted to the states. Signaling a new direction in state data privacy and consumer protection law, the California Consumer Privacy Act establishes important rights and protections for California residents with regard to the collection, use, disclosure, and sale of their personal information. The CCPA is certain to spur similar legislation and to affect national and international businesses that collect data from California's residents. Understanding the new law is important for all data‐driven industries, including health care. (shrink)

Mobile devices with health apps, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, crowd-sourced information, and other data sources have enabled research by new classes of researchers. Independent researchers, citizen scientists, patient-directed researchers, self-experimenters, and others are not covered by federal research regulations because they are not recipients of federal financial assistance or conducting research in anticipation of a submission to the FDA for approval of a new drug or medical device. This article addresses the difficult policy challenge of promoting the welfare and interests of (...) research participants, as well as the public, in the absence of regulatory requirements and without discouraging independent, innovative scientific inquiry. The article recommends a series of measures, including education, consultation, transparency, self-governance, and regulation to strike the appropriate balance. (shrink)

Although many people choose to sign consent forms and participate in research, how many thoroughly read a consent form before signing it? Across 3 experiments using 348 undergraduate student participants, we examined whether personality characteristics as well as consent form content, format, and delivery method were related to thorough reading. Students repeatedly failed to read the consent forms, although small effects were found favoring electronic delivery methods and traditional format forms. Potential explanations are discussed and include participant apathy, participants trying (...) to save time by not reading the consent form, and participant assumptions about consent forms. (shrink)

The contemporary operating environment for deployed United States military operations largely focuses on deployments to predominantly Islamic countries. The differences in cultural values between d...

The mere exposure effect is the increase in positive affect that results from the repeated exposure to previously novel stimuli. We sought to determine if judgments other than affective preference could reliably produce a mere exposure effect for two-dimensional random shapes. In two experiments, we found that brighter and darker judgments did not differentiate target from distracter shapes, liking judgments led to target selection greater than chance, and disliking judgments led to distracter selection greater than chance. These results for brighter, (...) darker, and liking judgments were obtained regardless of whether shape recognition was greater (Experiment 1) or not greater (Experiment 2) than chance. Effects of prior exposure to novel shapes were reliably observed only for affective judgment tasks. These results are inconsistent with general predictions made by the nonspecific activation hypothesis, but not the affective primacy or perceptual fluency hypotheses which were discussed in terms of cognitive neuroscience research. (shrink)

Are utopian visions viable in the 21st century? Utopia has been equated, for many, with totalitarianism. Such visions are not acceptable. The loss of utopian visions altogether is also unacceptable. This book argues that American Pragmatism and Feminist theory can combine to provide a process model of utopia that pushes to build a flexible future that helps us deal with change, conflict, and diversity without resorting to fixed ends.

If my ability to react freely is constrained by forces beyond my control, am I still morally responsible for the things I do? The question of whether, how and to what extent we are responsible for our own actions has always been central to debates in philosophy and theology, and has been the subject of much recent research in cognitive science. And for good reason- the views we take on free will affect the choices we make as individuals, the moral (...) judgments we make of others, and they will inform public policy. Michael McKenna's text introduces this important subject with remarkable clarity, offering the first comprehensive overview of both incompatibilist and compatibilist stances. He begins by motivating both viewpoints, then provides classical accounts of each before giving students an in-depth examination of current scholarship in the free will debate. Topics covered include: the nature of free will the nature of determinism the nature of moral responsibility arguments for the incompatibility of free will and determinism arguments of the compatibility of free will and determinism libertarian theories of free will and moral responsibility compatibilist theories of free will and moral responsibility hard determinist and hard incompatibilist theories. (shrink)

In “The Presumption in Favor of Requirement Conflicts” Julie McDonald has offered some serious and challenging criticisms of the recent literature centered around the moral dilemmas debate. If McDonald is correct, the philosophers who have contributed to this debate share some questionable presuppositions about the role and significance of an adequate moral theory. It is beyond dispute that the moral dilemmas debate has elevated the importance of requirement conflicts above other types of conflicts. McDonald argues that this is a needlessly (...) restrictive way to approach the issue. She maintains that the potential for unavoidable moral residue in the form of guilt, as well as the chance of moral unresolvability, are the two central concerns which motivate the issue. These concerns then figure into her diagnosis of the implicit background assumptions that explain the rationality of the debate. In what follows I shall consider whether or not the participants to this debate are forced to accept these assumptions. (shrink)

In this book Michael McKenna advances a new theory of moral responsibility, one that builds upon the work of P.F. Strawson.

I develop and argue for a version of epistemic contextualism - the view that the truth-values of ‘knowledge’ ascriptions depend upon and vary with the context in which they are uttered - that emphasises the roles played by both the practical interests of those in the context and the epistemic practices of the community of which they are part in determining the truth-values of their ‘knowledge’ ascriptions. My favoured way of putting it is that the truth of a ‘knowledge’ ascription (...) of the form ‘S knows that p’ requires that the subject of the ascription can rule out the relevant alternatives in which not-p, where the relevant alternatives are the ones that those in the ascriber’s context have a reason to consider. What alternatives those in the context have a reason to consider depends on their practical situation and on what alternatives are generally considered relevant within their community. I call this ‘interests contextualism’. The thesis splits into three parts. First, I deal with what I call ‘linguistic objections’, which purport to show that there’s no linguistic evidence that the expression ‘knows’ is context-sensitive, and objections concerning the way ‘knows’ behaves in intra- and inter-contextual disagreement reports. I argue that there are a number of ways in which contextualists can deal with these objections. Consequently, they provide no reason to reject contextualism. Second, there are a number of ways of going beyond the basic contextualist thesis, and I argue that the best way is along the lines indicated above, viz. interests contextualism. In the process I articulate a number of desiderata for a contextualist account of the features of context that are responsible for contextual variation in the truth-values of ‘knowledge’ ascriptions. I argue that, unlike its main rival - which I call ‘conversational contextualism’ - interests contextualism can satisfy all of the desiderata. Consequently, interests contextualism is preferable to conversational contextualism. Third, I argue that there is good reason to prefer interests contextualism to its noncontextualist rivals, strict invariantism, sensitive invariantism and relativism. The objections dealt with in the first part are meant to provide the main reason to prefer a sort of relativism to interests contextualism. Consequently, the upshot of the first part is that relativism is off the table. The considerations that tell in favour of interests contextualism and against sensitive invariantism are of two types. First, I argue that interests contextualism can deal with a wider range of cases than sensitive invariantism. Second, I argue that the influential account of the function of ‘knowledge’ ascriptions developed in Edward Craig tells against sensitive invariantism and in favour of interests contextualism. I also argue that the second consideration tells against strict invariantism as much as sensitive invariantism. Consequently, I conclude that interests contextualism is preferable to all of its rivals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The purpose of the present research was to investigate if and when leaders’ trait-like tendency to experience contempt would result in a lack of constructive attitudes and behaviors towards subordinates and an increase in destructive attitudes and behaviors towards subordinates. Previous research shows that increased power aligns individuals’ behavior with their trait-like tendencies. Accordingly, we hypothesized that leader contempt and power will interact to predict leaders’ people orientation, ethical leadership, dehumanization, and self-serving behavior. Across three studies, we indeed found that (...) contempt was more negatively associated with leaders’ people orientation and ethical leadership, and more positively associated with dehumanization and leaders’ self-serving behavior, when the leader had higher levels of power rather than lower levels of power. These results are discussed in the context of corporate ethical scandals demonstrating leaders’ focus on personal gain to the detriment of the needs of their subordinates. (shrink)

This is an excellent book. It is innovative in scope and carefully argued throughout. The book recasts the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists as a normative debate about the conditions under which it is fair to hold a person morally responsible. Wallace’s strategy is to explain moral agency by examining the stance of holding morally responsible. On Wallace’s account, moral agency does not require the ability to do otherwise; this would invite legitimate incompatibilist suspicions about free will and determinism. Rather, (...) what is required is the rational capacity to grasp and act upon distinctively moral reasons. (shrink)

Marc Lange has recently raised three objections to the account of minimal model explanations offered by Robert Batterman and Collin Rice. In this article, I suggest that these objections are misguided. I suggest that the objections raised by Lange stem from a misunderstanding of the what it is that minimal model explanations seek to explain. This misunderstanding, I argue, consists in Lange’s seeing minimal model explanations as relating special types of models to particular target systems rather than seeing minimal model (...) explanations as looking to explain robust patterns of behavior that are exhibited by a variety of physically diverse systems. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical literature challenges philosophers’ reliance on intuitions as evidence based on the fact that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and socio-economic status. Our research extends this challenge, investigating Lehrer’s appeal to the Truetemp Case as evidence against reliabilism. We found that intuitions in response to this case vary according to whether, and which, other thought experiments are considered first. Our results show that compared to subjects who receive the Truetemp Case (...) first, subjects first presented with a clear case of knowledge are less willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case, and subjects first presented with a clear case of nonknowledge are more willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case. We contend that this instability undermines the supposed evidential status of these intuitions, such that philosophers who deal in intuitions can no longer rest comfortably in their armchairs. (shrink)

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Contributors -- Preface -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility -- Chapter 2 Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 3 Blameworthiness and Frankfurt's Argument Against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 4 In Defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: Why I Don't Find Frankfurt's Argument Convincing -- Chapter 5 Responsibility, Indeterminism and Frankfurt-style Cases: A Reply to (...) Mele and Robb -- Chapter 6 Classical Compatibilism: Not Dead Yet -- Chapter 7 Bbs, Magnets and Seesaws: The Metaphysics of Frankfurt-style Cases -- Chapter 8 Moral Responsibility without Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 9 Freedom, Foreknowledge and Frankfurt -- Chapter 10 Source Incompatibilism and Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 11 Robustness, Control, and the Demand for Morally Significant Alternatives: Frankfurt Examples with Oodles and Oodles of Alternatives -- Chapter 12 Alternate Possibilities and Reid's Theory of Agent-causation -- Chapter 13 Responsibility and Agent-causation -- Chapter 14 Soft Libertarianism and Flickers of Freedom -- Chapter 15 'Ought' Implies 'Can', Blameworthiness, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities -- Chapter 16 The Moral Significance of Alternate Possibilities -- Chapter 17 The Selling of Joseph - A Frankfurtian Interpretation -- Chapter 18 Some Thoughts Concerning PAP -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer's The Metaphysics of Free Will is devoted to two major projects. First, Fischer defends the thesis that determinism is incompatible with a person's control over alternatives to the actual future. Second, Fischer defends the striking thesis that such control is not necessary for moral responsibility. This review essay examines Fischer's arguments for each thesis. Fischer's defense of the incompatibilist thesis is the most innovative to date, and I argue that his formulation restructures the free will debate. To (...) defend his second thesis Fischer relies upon examples designed to show that an agent is responsible for an unavoidable action. I criticize Fischer's account of these examples, but I also maintain that my criticisms do not compromise his theory of responsibility. I raise several other difficulties for Fischer's theory of responsibility, and I close by offering some suggestions about how he might further defend it. (shrink)

Le présent article, à cheval entre autobiographie et recherche, donne à lire trois récits entremêlés : dans l’un d’eux, l’autrice est temporairement prise au piège d’une situation de violence conjugale ; dans un autre, elle accepte enfin sa sexualité queer ; enfin, le dernier consiste en une réflexion sur les propos, au xviii e siècle, de Jeremy Bentham sur les « irrégularités sexuelles », pour reprendre sa formule. En particulier, l’autrice se penche sur les dynamiques de pouvoir, notamment sur la (...) subversion de la soumission apparente, devenue pouvoir, dans le cadre d’actes consentis, et interroge ce qui nous pousse à faire du _kink_ de domination/soumission un comportement interdit ou tabou. (shrink)

Skeptical invariantism isn’t a popular view about the semantics of knowledge attributions. But what, exactly, is wrong with it? The basic problem is that it seems to run foul of the fact that we know quite a lot of things. I agree that it is a key desideratum for an account of knowledge that it accommodate the fact that we know a lot of things. But what sorts of things should a plausible theory of knowledge say that we know? In (...) this paper I sketch an answer to this question and then apply it to skeptical invariantism. I start by distinguishing between a “radical” skeptical invariantist position (on which the standards for knowing are so high that we rarely if ever satisfy them) and a more “moderate” skeptical invariantist position (on which the standards are very hard, but not impossible, to satisfy). I then argue that, while radical forms of skeptical invariantism are clearly not going to do a good job of satisfying the key desideratum, more moderate forms can do quite well with respect to it. In particular, I argue the version of moderate skeptical invariantism defended by Davide Fassio can plausibly satisfy it. (shrink)

Is moral responsibility essentially historical? Consider two agents qualitatively identical with respect to all of their nonhistorical properties just prior to the act of A-ing. Is it possible that, due only to differences in their respective histories, when each A-s only one A-s freely and is morally responsible for doing so? Nonhistorical theorists say “no.” Historical theorists say “yes.” Elsewhere, I have argued on behalf of philosophers like Harry G. Frankfurt that nonhistorical theorists can resist the historical theorists’ case against (...) them, and that, therefore, a nonhistorical thesis remains a live option. Nevertheless, I have remained officially agnostic in this debate, as I acknowledge the pull of the competing considerations speaking on behalf of each view. In what follows, I turn from defending the nonhistorical position to fashioning a new historical theory, a relatively modest one that captures what is especially gripping about the kinds of examples that seem to commend an historical conclusion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Pyrrhus Perplex: A Superficial View of Mimesis Andrew J. McKenna Loyola University Chicago In the interest of knowledge conveyed as experience, a teacher of literature likes to begin with a story: A man sets out to discover a treasure he believes is hidden under a stone; he turns over stone after stone but finds nothing. He grows tired of such futile undertaking but the treasure is too (...) precious for him to give up. So he begins to look for a stone which is too heavy to lift—he places all his hopes in that stone and he will waste all his remaining strength on it. This exquisite little parable from René Girard's Deceit, Desire and the Novel (176) awaits correlation with Kafka ("Before the Law"), but it can also remind us ofthe passionate imbroglio we find in Racine's Andromaque. I will dwell on the stage play on the assumption that we are even more confused about love than about legal affairs. The play embodies an essential paradox by dramatizing relations in a way that is contrary to our normal expectations of order and conduct: Mais parmi ces périls où je cours pour vous plaire, Me refuseriez-vous un regard moins sévère? (I.iv) (But among the perils I risk to please you, Would you refuse me a gaze less severe?) This is not a vassal or a servant appealing to his master, but a sovereign, Pyrrhus, appealing to his captive female slave, Andromache. Our routine categories are turned upside down. 32Andrew J. McKenna Pyrrhus has everything going for him: he is the son ofAchilles, known to his world (and ours) as the world's greatest warrior, and after his conquest of Troy he is betrothed to Hermione, daughter of Helen, the world's most beautiful woman. There is no matter for tragedy in this, a happy conclusion to the Trojan war. But Pyrrhus spurns Hermione in amorous pursuit of Andromache, whom he counts among plunder of the city he has destroyed. She is the widow of Hector whom his father has slain, which makes her the last person in the world disposed to favor his suit. Andromache is very like the stone which is too heavy to lift, for all the leverage Pyrrhus exercises by threatening to deliver her son Astyanax for slaughter by the still vengeful Greeks. And Racine makes us understand that it is not in spite of Andromache 's resistance to his appeals butjust because ofthem that Pyrrhus wastes his life trying to move her. The treasure that Pyrrhus pursues, which as the son of Achilles he has no choice but to pursue, is "la gloire," the recognized and incommensurate superiority over other mortals. Yet he describes himself plaintively to Andromache as "Vaincu, chargé de fers, de regrets consumé" (vanquished, in chains, tormented by regret). For four acts of the play Pyrrhus mostly cultivates "enslavement, failure, and shame," which is how Girard describes the masochist in the parable he invented to depict him, and in the fifth act he is slain by his Greek allies at the jealous instigation of Hermione, who then stabs herself over his body. Orestes, who lead the Greeks to the assault in amorous obedience to Hermione, goes insane. The quest for glory is a recipe for disaster. A masochist is someone whom we may describe as preferring pain to pleasure, failure to success, and when I review Pyrrhus's conduct with students, they never fail to arrive at this diagnosis. Then the task is to unpack this reductive term, which since Freud has served to label a clinical perversion. In my experience, this task is more successfully accomplished with undergraduate students, who are likely to seek an explanation in terms of the information at hand, if only because they are too distracted, too harried to do otherwise. Graduate students, on the other hand, are committed to advanced professional research, which in literature departments typically sends them in quest of the mythological roots of such a story, and no less often favors the kinds of explanations we find in Freudian psychoanalysis. I take it as a measure of the intellectual confusion of our times that we encourage... (shrink)

In this paper, I offer some reasons for thinking that knowledge is a social phenomenon. My argument is based on Helen Longino’s work on scientific knowledge, in particular her 2002 book The Fate of Knowledge. Longino’s basic idea is that a scientific hypothesis or theory is justified when it emerges (relatively) unscathed from social interactions between scientists. If we accept – as Longino and many others do – that knowledge requires justification, it follows that scientific knowledge is a social phenomenon. (...) I argue that much the same goes for other forms of empirical knowledge, such as historical knowledge, various forms of collective knowledge and our knowledge of the ‘social world’. But does it go for empirical knowledge in general? I offer some – admittedly far from conclusive – reasons for thinking that it might. I also argue that, even if it doesn’t, we still need to distinguish between two kinds of knowledge, one of which is constitutively social and the other of which isn’t. Scientific knowledge is a paradigm example of the former and simple perceptual knowledge is a paradigm example of the latter. The end result is a form of pluralism about knowledge. (shrink)