While parents have long received guidance on how to raise children, a relatively new element of this involves explicit references to infant brain development, drawing on brain scans and neuroscientific knowledge. Sometimes called ‘brain-based parenting’, this has been criticised from within sociological and policy circles alike. However, the engagement of parents themselves with neuroscientific concepts is far less researched. Drawing on 22 interviews with parents/carers of children living in Scotland, this article examines how they account for their use of concepts (...) and understandings relating to neuroscience. Three normative tropes were salient: information about children’s processing speed, evidence about deprived Romanian orphans in the 1990s, and ideas relating to whether or not children should ‘self-settle’ when falling asleep. We interrogate how parents reflexively weigh and judge such understandings and ideas. In some cases, neuroscientific knowledge was enrolled by parents in ways that supported biologically reductionist models of childhood agency. This reductionism commonly had generative effects, enjoining new care practices and producing particular parent and infant subjectivities. Notably, parents do not uncritically adopt or accept neurobiological and/or psychological knowledge; rather, they reflect on whether and when it is applicable to and relevant for raising their children. Thus, our respondents draw on everyday epistemologies of parenting to negotiate brain-based understandings of infant development and behaviour, and invest meaning in these in ways that cannot be fully anticipated within straightforward celebrations or critiques of the content of parenting programmes drawing on neuropsychological ideas. (shrink)

The concept of “ethical research” holds considerable sway over the ways in which contemporary biomedical, natural, and social science investigations are funded, regulated, and practiced within a variety of countries. Some commentators have viewed this “new” means of governance positively; others, however, have been resoundingly critical, regarding it as restrictive and ethics bodies and regulations unfit for the task they have been set. Regardless, it is clear that science today is an “ethical” business. The ways in which formal and informal (...) ethical discourses and practices—what might be called “regimes of normativity”—structure scientific work and the meanings it is ascribed with have, however, been underexplored. This article attends to how science and ethics articulate; how they are, in many ways, co-produced. Exploring these processes of co-production casts into sharp relief the essential emotionality of science; the relationships investigators have with their colleagues, work, and research participants pulse with emotion, potentially shaping in important ways the very kinds of knowledge that laboratories produce. (shrink)

The development of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association9s _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_—the DSM-5—has reenergised and driven further forward critical discourse about the place and role of diagnosis in mental health. The DSM-5 has attracted considerable criticism, not least about its role in processes of medicalisation. This paper suggests the need for a sociology of psychiatric critique. Sociological analysis can help map fields of contention, and cast fresh light on the assumptions and nuances of debate (...) around the DSM-5; it underscores the importance of diagnosis to the governance of social and clinical life, as well as the wider discourses critical commentaries connect with and are activated by. More normatively, a sociology of critique can indicate which interests and values are structuring the dialogues being articulated, and just how diverse clinical opinion regarding the DSM can actually be. This has implications for the considerations of health services and policy decision-makers who might look to such debates for guidance. (shrink)

Citizens today are increasingly expected to be knowledgeable about and prepared to engage with biomedical knowledge. In this article, I wish to reframe this ‘public understanding of science’ project, and place fresh emphasis on public understandings of research: an engagement with the everyday laboratory practices of biomedicine and its associated ethics, rather than with specific scientific facts. This is not based on an assumption that non-scientists are ‘ignorant’ and are thus unable to ‘appropriately’ use or debate science; rather, it is (...) underpinned by an empirically-grounded observation that some individuals may be unfamiliar with certain specificities of particular modes of research and ethical frameworks, and, as a consequence, have their autonomy compromised when invited to participate in biomedical investigations. Drawing on the perspectives of participants in my own sociological research on the social and ethical dimensions of neuroscience, I argue that public understanding of biomedical research and its ethics should be developed both at the community level and within the research moment itself in order to enhance autonomy and promote more socially robust science. Public bioethics will have to play a key role in such an endeavour, and indeed will contribute in important ways to the opening up of new spaces of symmetrical engagement between bioethicists, scientists and wider publics—and hence to the democratisation of the bioethical enterprise. (shrink)

The British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has recently released new guidelines for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the psychiatric category antisocial personality disorder. Evident in these recommendations is a broader ambiguity regarding the ontology of ASPD. Although, perhaps, a mundane feature of much of medicine, in this case, ontological uncertainty has significant ethical implications as a product of the profound consequences for an individual categorised with this disorder. This paper argues that in refraining from emphasising uncertainty, (...) NICE risks reifying a controversial category. This is particularly problematical given that the guidelines recommend the identification of individuals “at risk” of raising antisocial children. Although this paper does not argue that NICE is “wrong” in any of its recommendations, more emphasis should have been placed on discussions of the ethical implications of diagnosis and treatment, especially given the multiple uncertainties associated with ASPD. It is proposed that these important issues be examined in more detail in revisions of existing NICE recommendations, and be included in upcoming guidance. This paper thus raises key questions regarding the place and role of ethics within the current and future remit of NICE. (shrink)

ArgumentResearch into the biological markers of pathology has long been a feature of British psychiatry. Such somatic indicators and associated features of mental disorder often intertwine with discourse on psychological and behavioral correlates and causes of mental ill-health. Disorders of sociality – particularly psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder – are important instances where the search for markers of pathology has a long history; research in this area has played an important role in shaping how mental health professionals understand the conditions. (...) Here, I characterize the multiplicity of psychiatric praxis that has sought to define the mark of antisociality as a form of “ontological anarchy.” I regard this as an essential feature of the search for biological and other markers of an unstable referent, positing that uncertainties endure – in part – precisely because of attempts to build consensus regarding the ontology of antisociality through biomedical means. Such an account is suggestive of the co-production of biomarkers, mental disorder, and psychiatric institutions. (shrink)

In the United States, the National Institute of Mental Health is seeking to encourage researchers to move away from diagnostic tools like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A key mechanism for this is the “Research Domain Criteria” initiative, closely associated with former NIMH Director Thomas Insel. This article examines how key figures in US psychiatry construct the purpose, nature, and implications of the ambiguous RDoC project; that is, how its novelty is constituted through discourse. In this paper, (...) I explore and analyze these actors’ accounts of what is new, important, or desirable about RDoC, demonstrating how they are constituted through institutional context and personal affects. In my interviews with mental health opinion leaders, RDoC is presented as overly reliant on neurobiological epistemologies, distant from clinical imaginaries and imperatives, and introduced in a top-down manner inconsistent with the professional norms of scientific research. Ultimately, the article aims to add empirical depth to current understandings about the epistemological and ontological politics of contemporary psychiatry and to contribute to science and technology studies debates about “the new” in technoscience. Accordingly, I use discussions about RDoC as a case study in the sociology of novelty. (shrink)

This volume gathers together for the first time are all the key texts in a crucial debate in modern philosophy, centered on Leibniz's famous 1695 essay, the "New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication," in which he introduced his strikingly original theory of metaphysics. His "system" became increasingly famous and drew him into discussion and development of these ideas, both in public and in private, with a variety of thinkers, most notably the great French philosopher Pierre Bayle. (...) Woolhouse's and Francks's new English edition gives the only full representation of this debate, and will therefore be essential reading for anyone who wishes to gain a proper understanding of Leibniz's philosophy and its intelletual context. All the texts are newly translated and extensively annotated; many appear in English for the first time. (shrink)

Much bioethical scholarship is concerned with the social, legal and philosophical implications of new and emerging science and medicine, as well as with the processes of research that under-gird these innovations. Science and technology studies (STS), and the related and interpenetrating disciplines of anthropology and sociology, have also explored what novel technoscience might imply for society, and how the social is constitutive of scientific knowledge and technological artefacts. More recently, social scientists have interrogated the emergence of ethical issues: they have (...) documented how particular matters come to be regarded as in some way to do with ‘ethics’, and how this in turn enjoins particular types of social action. In this paper, I will discuss some of this and other STS (and STS-inflected) literature and reflect on how it might complement more ‘traditional’ modes of bioethical enquiry. I argue that STS might (1) cast new light on current bioethical issues, (2) direct the gaze of bioethicists towards matters that may previously have escaped their attention, and (3) indicate the import not only of the ethical implications of biomedical innovation, but also how these innovative and other processes feature ethics as a dimension of everyday laboratory and clinical work. In sum, engagements between STS and bioethics are increasingly important in order to understand and manage the complex dynamics between science, medicine and ethics in society. (shrink)

Media reporting of science has consequences for public debates on the ethics of research. Accordingly, it is crucial to understand how the sciences of the brain and the mind are covered in the media, and how coverage is received and negotiated. The authors report here their sociological findings from a case study of media coverage and associated reader comments of an article from Annals of Neurology. The media attention attracted by the article was high for cognitive science; further, as associates/members (...) of the Centre where it was produced, the authors of the research reported here had rare insight into how the scientists responsible for the Annals of Neurology article interacted with the media. The data corpus included 37 news items and 228 readers’ comments, examined via qualitative thematic analysis. Media coverage of the article was largely accurate, without merely copying the press release. Analysis of reader comments showed these to be an important resource for considering issues of import to neuroethics scholars, as well as to scientists themselves. In particular, the findings demonstrate how personal experiences were vital in shaping readers’ accounts of their agreements with the scientific article. Furthermore, the data show how scientific research can catalyse political discussions in ways likely unanticipated by scientists. The analysis indicates the importance of dialogue between journalists, laboratory scientists and social scientists in order to support the communication of the messages researchers intend. (shrink)

This chapter offers a proceduralist argument against capital punishment. More specifically, it contends that the possibility of irrevocable mistakes precludes the just administration of the death penalty. At stake is a principle of political morality: legal institutions must strive to remedy their mistakes and to compensate those who suffer from wrongful sanctions. The incompatibility of remedy and execution is the crux of the irrevocability argument: because the wrongly executed cannot enjoy the morally required compensation, execution is impermissible. Along with defending (...) his key premises, Yost explains the complicated role that sentencing uncertainty plays in the argument. He concludes by noting some of the flaws in substantive consequentialist and retributivist justifications of capital punishment. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues frequently criticize traditional Greek myth, yet Plato also integrates myth with his writing. Daniel S. Werner confronts this paradox through an in-depth analysis of the Phaedrus, Plato's most mythical dialogue. Werner argues that the myths of the Phaedrus serve several complex functions: they bring nonphilosophers into the philosophical life; they offer a starting point for philosophical inquiry; they unify the dialogue as a literary and dramatic whole; they draw attention to the limits of language and the limits of (...) knowledge; and they allow Plato to co-opt cultural authority as a way of defining and legitimating the practice of philosophy. Platonic myth, as a species of traditional tale, is thus both distinct from philosophical dialectic and similar to it. Ultimately, the most powerful effect of Platonic myth is the way in which it leads readers to participate in Plato's dialogues and to engage in a process of self-examination. (shrink)

Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own thought processes. Yanofsky describes (...) simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve; perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense; different levels of infinity; the bizarre world of the quantum; the relevance of relativity theory; the causes of chaos theory; math problems that cannot be solved by normal means; and statements that are true but cannot be proven. He explains the limitations of our intuitions about the world -- our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal (...) patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

From the concrete experience of war, Michael S. Yandell constructs a phenomenology of “negative revelation” in which false or distorted claims of goodness and justice disintegrate and become meaningless, adding depth to the term moral injury.

t. 1. Apo ton prōto skeptomeno anthrōpo mechri ton 6. aiōna M.Ch. -- t. 2. Apo ton 7. aiōna M.Ch. mechri to sēmera.

Kant famously insists that free will is a condition of morality. The difficulty of providing a demonstration of freedom has left him vulnerable to devastating criticism: critics charge that Kant's post-Groundwork justification of morality amounts to a dogmatic assertion of morality's authority. My paper rebuts this objection, showing that Kant offers a cogent demonstration of freedom. My central claim is that the demonstration must be understood in practical rather than theoretical terms. A practical demonstration of x works by bringing x (...) into existence, and what the demonstration of freedom brings into existence is a moral will, a will regulated by the moral law and capable of acting in accordance with it. Since to act morally is to act freely, bringing a moral will into existence actualizes our capacity for freedom and demonstrates that we possess it. To confirm the viability of such a demonstration, Kant must establish that agents can regulate their wills by practical principles, and that practical judgments are efficacious of themselves (i.e., that non-Humean motivational internalism is true). Kant, I argue, is successful on both counts. (shrink)

Purpose. To examine the existential anthropology of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski, in order to demonstrate the necessity of distinguishing the universal-spiritual, as human in human being, apart from the individual-existential in him, and to reveal the hierarchical correlation of biosocial, existential and spiritual spheres in personality. Theoretical basis. Within existential philosophy the author differentiates two separate traditions and proceeds from the insufficiency of the distinction of existential sphere, proposed by phenomenological tradition, showing the necessity of its correlation with the (...) spiritual sphere as a sphere of humanity, proposed by non-phenomenological tradition of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski. Originality. The author presents the anthropological conception of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski, in which human personality is understood as unity of individual-existential and universal-spiritual, which requires a special trans-empirical field of culture, which contains senses, images and symbols of humanity. Also, the author presents the recent developments of existential thinkers in distinguishing existential and spiritual dimensions, both not reducible to the physical and social dimensions. Conclusions. In both existential traditions, the specifically human was founded as a trans-biological and trans-social phenomenon, which appears as indefinable and non-predetermined. But in first tradition, humanity is understood as an existence, as a unique individuality, "project", variant of humanity, equivalent to other variants, and universal is understood as a community of human condition in the world. While in the second tradition, the universal is understood as spiritual. Thus, horizontal level of our private existence, as the process of movement from birth to death, is supplemented by vertical of human, universal ideals and images. Humanity appears as a task, on the way to which human being transcends beyond the limits of his individual "self" to the "super-individual", through inclusion into spiritual community, into universal culture. (shrink)

Dmitri Nikulin is one of the few contemporary philosophers to have devoted books to the topic of dialogue and the dialogical self, especially in the last fifteen years. Yet his work on dialogue and the dialogical has received scant attention by philosophers, and this neglect has hurt the ongoing development of contemporary philosophical work on dialogicality. I want to address this lacuna in contemporary philosophical scholarship on dialogicality and suggest that, although Nikulin’s account is no doubt insightful and thought-provoking, it (...) is problematic for two main reasons: first, his account fails to recognize the proper relationship between dialogue and agency; and second, his enumeration of the necessary and sufficient conditions for dialogue contains conceptual inconsistencies. (shrink)

In this original work of cultural criticism, Allen S. Weiss explores the meaning of radio to the modern imagination.

In 'Een handvol filosofen' staan de filosofen centraal die sinds de oprichting van de Vrije Universiteit in 1880 aan deze instelling verbonden zijn geweest. Het gaat hierbij niet alleen om de inhoud van hun werk, maar ook om de personen zelf. Er waren filosofiedocenten die zich met de universiteit identificeerden en zich volledig konden ontplooien. Er waren er echter ook voor wie dit niet gold, die geïsoleerd of in gewetensnood raakten. Veel filosofiestudenten waren actief betrokken bij wat er in hun (...) faculteit gebeurde. Zij namen initiatieven, protesteerden soms tegen de gang van zaken en kozen partij in conflictsituaties. Sinds het eind van de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw verloor de Vrije Universiteit geleidelijk haar christelijk karakter. Tegenwoordig werken alle stafleden vanuit hun eigen motivatie mee aan een hoofdzakelijk seculier geworden universiteit, die ruimte biedt voor religieuze en levensbeschouwelijke diversiteit. (shrink)

The foundation of the Christian counselling movement -- Christian counselling in the UK -- The aims of Christian counselling -- Integrating psychological and biblical truth -- Sigmund Freud--the founding father of psychotherapy -- The individual psychology of Alfred Adler -- Abraham Maslow--the man with new age tendencies -- Carl Rogers--a man who believed in himself -- Albert Ellis--the aggressive atheist -- The Bible's verdict on psychological 'truth' -- The case against Larry Crabb -- Self-esteem: the secular foundation -- Self-esteem and (...) the Christian counselling movement -- Self-esteem dogma in the light of scripture. (shrink)

Where has the Western attraction to the study and practice of shamanic techniques brought us? Where might it take us? In what ways have our Western biases and philosophical underpinnings influenced and changed how shamanism is practiced, both in the West and in the traditional cultures out of which they emerged? Is it time to stop using the umbrella term “shamanism” to refer to such diverse cross-cultural practices? What are our responsibilities, both as researchers and as spiritual seekers? In this (...) conversation, researcher-authors Stephan Beyer, Stanley Krippner, and Hillary S. Webb discuss their work in field and consider some of the ramifications of the Western world's intellectual and spiritual fascination with shamanic practices. Special attention is paid to the language used to describe these techniques and their practitioners, the developing relationship between researchers and cultural participants, and the ethical implications of merging what are often very distinct worldviews. (shrink)

Ariès traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret.