In 1885, Holloway Sanatorium, an asylum for the ‘mentally afflicted of the middle classes’ opened in Egham, Surrey, 20 miles outside London. Until 1910, photographs of about a third of the patients—both those ‘Certified Lunatic by Inquisition’ and the ‘Voluntary Boarders’ who admitted themselves—were pasted into the asylum's case books. This paper analyses the photographs that were included in the very first of these, when there was a great uncertainty as to how to represent these patients, or whether to represent (...) them at all. The photographs are unlike any other institutional images of the period, and raise critical questions about the imagined incompatibility between documentary photography and personal agency. (shrink)

We need to find a middle way between the exaggerated deference towards science characteristic of scientism, and the exaggerated suspicion characteristic of anti-scientific attitudes — to acknowledge that science is neither sacred nor a confidence trick. The Critical Commonsensist account of scientific evidence and scientific method offered here corrects the narrowly logical approach of the Old Deferentialists without succumbing to the New Cynics' sociologism or their factitious despair of the epistemic credentials of science.

Human genomics is a translational field spanning research, clinical care, public health, and direct-to-consumer testing. However, law differs across these domains on issues including liability, consent, promoting quality of analysis and interpretation, and safeguarding privacy. Genomic activities crossing domains can thus encounter confusion and conflicts among these approaches. This paper suggests how to resolve these conflicts while protecting the rights and interests of individuals sequenced. Translational genomics requires this more translational approach to law.

[opening paragraph]: Do you believe, deep down, that you exist? Do you feel as though `you' make the decisions and run `your' life? Above all do you think that `you' are conscious? If so, according to Guy Claxton's latest book, you have got it all wrong.

Drawing on John Dewey's discussion of habit in Human Nature and Conduct and Simone de Beauvoir's discussion of the “adventurer” in The Ethics of Ambiguity, I argue that while some of our relations with things and people may very well be instrumental, many take a different form in which it is our very setting, and not merely our attainment, of ends that is at stake. Moreover, the fullest realization of our freedom requires us to recognize not only that this different (...) form of relation, which is cooperative rather than controlling, exists but also that it is constitutive of, rather than in opposition to, our freedom. I conclude by briefly examining how our honest acknowledgment of a kind of powerlessness inherent to our powers, to our freedom, might change the way we interact with other things and other people. (shrink)

The Hostile Environment: Students Who Bully in School analyzes seminal and current research on childhood risk factors, legal issues, cyberbullying, and associations between bullying and mental health to suggest preventative practices.

Fairness in evaluation processes for women in science and engineering is only one of a set of issues that need to be addressed to reach gender equality. This article uses concepts from Amartya Sen’s work on inequality to frame gender issues in science and technology policy. Programs that focus on increasing the number of women in science and engineering careers have not generally addressed a broader set of circumstances that intersect with gender at various economic levels and stages of life. (...) The agendas in research and innovation policies also need to reflect these issues, and fair allocation of resources within both science and technology needs to be on the agenda. Getting women into high-level positions is not enough. Articulating the full research and innovation agendas for women will require broader participatory processes. (shrink)

Because its business is to resolve disputed issues, the law very often calls on those fields of science where the pressure of commercial interests is most severe. Because the legal system aspires to handle disputes promptly, the scientific questions to which it seeks answers will often be those for which all the evidence is not yet in. Because of its case-specificity, the legal system often demands answers of a kind science is not well-equipped to supply; and, for related reasons, constitutes (...) virtually the entire market for certain fields of forensic science and for certain psychiatric specialties. Because of its adversarial character, the law tends to draw in scientists who are more willing than most to give an opinion on less-than-overwhelming evidence; and the more often such a witness testifies, the more unbudgeably confident he may become in his opinion. Legal rules can make it impossible to bring potentially useful scientific information to light, and the legal penchant for “indicia” and the like can transform scientific subtleties into legal shibboleths. And because of its concern for precedent, and the desideratum of finality, the law sometimes lags behind scientific advances. (shrink)

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties and factorial structure of the Schema Mode Inventory for Eating Disorders (SMI-ED) in a disordered eating population. Method: 573 participants with disordered eating patterns as measured by the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) completed the 190-item adapted version of the Schema Mode Inventory (SMI). The new SMI-ED was developed by clinicians/researchers specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, through combining items from the original SMI with a set of (...) additional questions specifically representative of the eating disorder population. Psychometric testing included Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and internal consistency (Cronbach’s α). Multivariate Analyses of Covariance (MANCOVA) was also run to test statistical differences between the EDE-Q subscales on the SMI-ED modes, while controlling for possible confounding variables. Results: Factorial analysis confirmed an acceptable sixteen-related-factors solution for the SMI-ED, thus providing preliminary evidence for the adequate validity of the new measure based on internal structure. Concurrent validity was also established through moderate to high correlations on the modes most relevant to eating disorders with EDE-Q subscales. This study represents the first step in creating a psychometrically sound instrument for measuring schema modes in eating disorders, and provides greater insight into the relevant schema modes within this population. Conclusion: This research represents an important preliminary step toward understanding and labeling the schema mode model for this clinical group. Findings from the psychometric evaluation of SMI-ED suggest that this is a useful tool which may further assist in the measurement and conceptualization of schema modes in this population. (shrink)

I explore the implications of the foundation metaphor for understanding the role of moral theories in ethics and bioethics and argue.

Human tool behavior is species-specific. It remains a diagnostic feature of humans, even when comparisons are made with closely related non-human primates. The archaeological record demonstrates both the deep antiquity of human tool behavior and its fundamental role in distinguishing human behavior from that of non-human primates.

Whether the mind is thought to be physical or non-physical, philosophers generally agree that there is an intimate connection between the mind and the self. Dualists have always maintained that the person is his mind and that he just happens to have a particular body. There has also been support for this in classical and contemporary literature on personal identity in the discussions of numerous hypothetical cases involving the transfer of “mental contents” from one body to another, often in the (...) form of “brain transplants”. In connection with each case the following question was raised: Does mental continuity guarantee that one will be the same person or is spatio-temporal continuity necessary? Most philosophers have thought that spatio-temporal continuity is not necessary, but that mental continuity is. Finally, very recently there has been much interest in two types of abnormal phenomena—the “split-brain” and multiple personalities—which give indications of there being more than one mental stream associated with a single body and, as a result, philosophers discussing these phenomena have thought that there is good reason to think of there being more than one self involved in such cases. (shrink)

This paper looks at a range of metaphors used within HIV/AIDS discussions and research in support of the claim that bioethicists should pay serious attention to metaphors. Metaphors shape the ways we think about problems and the types of solutions we investigate. HIV/AIDS is an especially rich field for the investigation of metaphor, since the struggles for dominance among different metaphorical options has been very evident. In the field of medical resarch as well as in the area of public policy, (...) different metaphors support different strategies and, therefore, the choice of metaphor has ethical significance. I argue that feminists should engage in these debates since they have an interest in the metaphors selected. They can also learn to be more self-conscious in choosing politically liberating metaphors in other bioethics contexts. (shrink)

According to the language of thought (LOT) approach and the related computational theory of mind (CTM), thinking is the processing of symbols in an inner mental language that is distinct from any public language. Herein, I explore a deep problem at the heart of the LOT/CTM program—it has yet to provide a plausible conception of a mental symbol.

In this book, Abraham argues that a theological imagination can expand the contours of postcolonial theory through a reexamination of notions of subjectivity, gender, and violence in a dialogical model with Karl Rahner. She raises the question of whether postcolonial theory, with its disavowal of religious agency, can provide an invigorating occasion for Catholic theology.