Both individuals with diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and individuals high in psychopathic traits show reduced susceptibility to contagious yawning; that is, yawning after seeing or hearing another person yawn. Yet it is unclear whether the same underlying processes are responsible for the relationship between reduced contagion and these very different types of clinical traits. College Students watched videos of individuals yawning or scratching while their eye movements were tracked. They completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, the Psychopathy (...) Personality Inventory-Revised, and the Adolescent and Adult Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist. Both psychopathic traits and autistic traits showed an inverse relationship to contagious yawning, consistent with previous research. However, the relationship between autistic traits and contagious yawning was moderated by eye gaze. Furthermore, participants high in autistic traits showed typical levels of contagious itching whereas adults high in psychopathic traits showed diminished itch contagion. Finally, only psychopathic traits were associated with lower overall levels of empathy. The findings imply that the underlying processes contributing to the disruptions in contagious yawning amongst individuals high in autistic vs. psychopathic traits are distinct. In contrast to adults high in psychopathic traits, diminished contagion may appear amongst people with high levels of autistic traits secondary to diminished attention to the faces of others, and in the absence of a background deficit in emotional empathy. (shrink)

Using the thought of Italian philosopher Robert Esposito, Taylor M. Weaver provides a new reading of Pauline community.

Large-scale data systems are increasingly envisioned as tools for justice, with big data analytics offering a key opportunity to advance health equity. Health systems face growing public pressure to collect data on patient “social factors,” and advocates and public officials seek to leverage such data sources as a means of system transformation. Despite the promise of this “data-driven” strategy, there is little empirical work that examines big data in action directly within the sites of care expected to transform. In this (...) article, I present a case study on one such initiative, focusing on a large public safety-net health system’s initiation of sexual orientation and gender identity data collection within the clinical setting. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with providers, staff, and administrators, I highlight three main challenges that elude big data’s grasp on inequality: provider and staff’s limited understanding of the social significance of data collection; patient perception of the cultural insensitivity of data items; and clinic need to balance data requests with competing priorities within a constrained time window. These issues reflect structural challenges within safety-net care that big data alone are unable to address in advancing social justice. I discuss these findings by considering the present data-driven strategy alongside two complementary courses of action: diversifying the health professions workforce and clinical education reform. To truly advance justice, we need more than “just data”: we need to confront the fundamental conditions of social inequality. (shrink)

Can emancipatory, decolonial histories of science be extracted from objects collected from—or made visible to history by—the archives of colonialism? To answer this question, this essay presents the case study of a rhinoceros horn amulet (qarn al-khartit), an ethnographic object collected by the British anthropologist Winifred Blackman during her fieldwork in Egypt in the late 1920s. Markedly decentering the traditional colonial history of how the rhinoceros horn was collected and displayed as an object in European museums, the essay follows the (...) trail of the rhinoceros horn back to the site of its collection in Egypt to reveal a strikingly different story: one of non-Western histories of science/magic/medicine, gender, race, and enslavement, all set against the backdrop of Egypt’s imperial pursuits in East Africa. The essay proposes the method of decolonial materialism to “read” objects, like the rhinoceros horn, as archives of scientific knowledge otherwise. (shrink)

The increasing complexity of human subjects research and its oversight has prompted researchers, as well as institutional review boards, to have a forum in which to discuss challenging or novel ethical issues not fully addressed by regulations. Research ethics consultation services provide such a forum. In this article, we rely on the experiences of a national Research Ethics Consultation Collaborative that collected more than 350 research ethics consultations in a repository and published 18 challenging cases with accompanying ethical commentaries to (...) highlight four contexts in which REC can be a valuable resource. REC assists: 1) investigators before and after the regulatory review; 2) investigators, IRBs, and other research administrators facing challenging and novel ethical issues; 3) IRBs and investigators with the increasing challenges of informed consent and risk/benefit analysis; and 4) in providing flexible and collaborative assistance to overcome study hurdles, mediate conflicts within a team, or directly engage with research participants. Institutions that have established, or plan to establish, REC services should work to raise the visibility of their service and engage in open communication with existing clinical ethics consult services as well as the IRB. While the IRB system remains the foundation for the ethical review of research, REC can be a valuable service for investigators, regulators, and research participants aligned with the goal of supporting ethical research. (shrink)

_CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2022__ In this thought-provoking volume, editors Rebecca M. Taylor and Ashley Floyd Kuntz invite readers to explore the many facets of on-campus ethical dilemmas and the careful, nuanced decision-making processes required to address them._ Taylor and Kuntz demonstrate how to apply collaborative, multidisciplinary, philosophical inquiry to deeply complex issues. They present seven normative case studies focusing on a variety of campus quandaries, from urgent matters such as Title IX violations and free speech in social (...) media policy to long-simmering concerns such as admissions and access and the future of historically Black colleges and universities. The editors then bring together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners with a broad array of disciplinary and personal backgrounds to offer their commentary and insight on the cases. Leaders in higher education are under immense pressure to respond to campus crises quickly, to quell controversy, and to avoid the backlash of public scrutiny in an ever-shifting sociopolitical terrain. Yet, in tension with such pressures, adequate responses to these dilemmas require leaders to make ethical, contextual choices that effectively foster inclusion, respect individual and institutional freedoms, and promote equity. Expanding the scope of inquiry, the contributors challenge underlying assumptions, raise points that had been omitted from the original cases, and imagine alternative solutions. _Ethics in Higher Education_ appeals to readers to do the same, in the interest of advancing ethical decision-making on campuses. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive evaluation of Charles Taylor's work and a major contribution to leading questions in philosophy and the human sciences as they face an increasingly pluralistic age. Charles Taylor is one of the most influential contemporary moral and political philosophers: in an era of specialisation he is one of the few thinkers who has developed a comprehensive philosophy which speaks to the conditions of the modern world in a way that is compelling to specialists in (...) various disciplines. This collection of specially commissioned essays brings together twelve distinguished scholars from a variety of fields to discuss critically Taylor's work. The topics range from the history of philosophy, to truth, modernity and postmodernity, theism, interpretation, the human sciences, liberalism, pluralism and difference. Taylor responds to all the contributions and re-articulates his own views. (shrink)

Transgender inclusion within policy is critical yet often missing. We propose a policy tool to assesses human rights, access to resources and opportunities, language, and implications for transgender and nonbinary individuals. Acknowledging trans communities as standard policy practice can serve as an essential practice to shift dialogue and norms.

What could an empirical theory of the Mind be? Surely one which demonstrated that questions about the existence of minds were empirical questions – to be decided by observation, by the senses. This in turn would require an explanation of the meaning of statements about minds or mental states in terms referring to observable events, states and objects.

The scale and variety of acts of religious intolerance evident in so many countries today are of enormous contemporary concern. This 2005 study attempts a thorough and systematic treatment of both Universal and European practice. The standards applicable to freedom of religion are subjected to a detailed critique, and their development and implementation within the UN is distinguished from that within Strasbourg, in order to discern trends and obstacles to their advancement and to highlight the rationale for any apparent departures (...) between the two systems. This dual focus also demonstrates the acute need for the European Court to heed the warnings from various patterns of violation throughout the world illustrated by the Human Rights Committee and the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief. (shrink)

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