With their comprehensive categorization of “ambivalence-related phenomena,” Moore et al. helpfully clarify and contextualize these decisional states as they arise in patient care. Given the...

Hospital systems commonly face the challenge of determining just ways to allocate scarce drugs during national shortages. There is no standardised approach of how this should be instituted, but principles of distributive justice are commonly used so that patients who are most likely to benefit from the drug receive it. As a result, clinical indications, in which the evidence for the drug is assumed to be established, are often prioritised over research use. In this manuscript, we present a case of (...) a phase II investigational trial of intravenous thiamine for delirium prevention in patients undergoing haematopoietic stem cell transplantation to emphasise several shortcomings in the overarching prioritisation of clinical over research uses of scarce drugs. Specifically, we present the following considerations: clinical use may not have stronger evidence than research use; a strong scientific rationale for research use may outweigh the claim for clinical indications in which there is weak evidence; treatment within the context of a clinical trial may be the standard of care; and research use may not only benefit patients receiving the treatment but also offers the prospect of improving future clinical care. In summary, we argue against allocation schemes that prohibit all research uses of scarce drugs and instead recommend that allocation schemes include a balanced approach that weighs risks and benefits of access to scarce drugs irrespective of the research versus clinical use designation. (shrink)

In two studies, we used the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) to investigate the relationship between individual differences in moral philosophy, involvement in the animal rights movement, and attitudes toward the treatment of animals. In the first, 600 animal rights activists attending a national demonstration and 266 nonactivist college students were given the EPQ. Analysis of the returns from 157 activists and 198 students indicated that the activists were more likely than the students to hold an "absolutist" moral orientation (high idealism, (...) low relativism). In the second study, 169 students were given the EPQ with a scale designed to measure attitudes toward the treatment of animals. Multiple regression showed that gender and the EPQ dimension of idealism were related to attitudes toward animal use. (shrink)

The major competing statistical paradigms share a common remarkable but unremarked thread: in many of their inferential applications, different probability interpretations are combined. How this plays out in different theories of inference depends on the type of question asked. We distinguish four question types: confirmation, evidence, decision, and prediction. We show that Bayesian confirmation theory mixes what are intuitively “subjective” and “objective” interpretations of probability, whereas the likelihood-based account of evidence melds three conceptions of what constitutes an “objective” probability.

Today’s medical training environment exposes medical trainees to many aspects of what has been called “the hidden curriculum.” In this article, we examine the relationship between two aspects of the hidden curriculum, the performance of emotional labor and the characterization of patients and proxies as “bad,” by analyzing clinical ethics discussions with resident trainees at an academic medical center. We argue that clinicians’ characterization of certain patients and proxies as “bad,” when they are not, can take an unnecessary toll on (...) trainees’ emotions. We conclude with a discussion of how training in ethics may help uncover and examine these aspects of the hidden curriculum. (shrink)

_Addresses of the Mississippi Philosophical Association_ is a collection of presidential and invited addresses from the members of the Mississippi Philosophical Association (MPA). Papers date from the inception of the association in the mid-1940s and continue through 1999. The common thread in these addresses is the authors' service to or leadership in the MPA. The content and methods in the chapters are diverse, including addresses on ethics, political philosophy, history of philosophy, epistemology, aesthetics, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, philosophy (...) of science, and philosophical theology. Some unique features of this book are a history of the MPA, biographical sketches and photographs of each contributor, and the inclusion of the unpublished 1988 Dunbar Lectures from Millsaps College and the unpublished 1992 Akin Lecture from Mississippi College. These essays and lectures reveal the vitality of philosophy in the colleges and universities of Mississippi. As part of the special series, Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies in the larger Value Inquiry Book Series, this book documents - in a unique historical format - the value and vitality of a state philosophical organization. “There has been no attempt to mold these addresses into a unity; rather, the addresses offer a glimpse of the pluralistic philosophical reflection among the philosophical faculties of the private colleges and public universities in the state of Mississippi. To the surprise of some people, philosophy is alive, well, diverse, and flourishing in Mississippi!” (from the Preface). (shrink)

THE CENTRALITY OF "SYMPATHY" to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments points to the centrality of love in the book. While Smith delineates a somewhat unusual, technical sense of "sympathy", his actual use of the term frequently slips into its more ordinary sense of "compassion" or affectionate fellow feeling. This no doubt intentional equivocation on Smith's part helps suffuse the book with these themes, to the point that, without much exaggeration, one could say that the Theory of Moral Sentiments is (...) generally about love: our need for love and sympathy, love as friendship, self-love, the love of praise and praiseworthiness, the love of beauty. Even in the Wealth of Nations, our loves are thought to be very important in explaining our behavior. Smith is unusual among modern moral philosophers in according so central a place to love in this broad sense, although of course Christianity made love a central theme in reflection on ethical life, and philosophers such as Hutcheson made benevolence a key virtue in their ethical systems. However, it is not our purpose to examine Smith's critique of Hutcheson or indeed of any of his predecessors. Rather we aim in this paper to reflect on his treatment of this topic. We shall do so in part by means of comparisons with Aristotle and Plato, first with respect to friendship and then with respect to love generally. Smith's writing is replete with classical references, raising the issue of the degree to which his thought is "ancient" or "modern." Friendship is arguably the pinnacle of social relations for the ancients, and thus it provides us with a useful device for determining the degree to which Smith's thought embodies classical moral and philosophical principles. The subtlety of Smith's interweaving of traditions will become visible as we reflect not just on the ways Smith's thought exhibits classical conceptions of friendship and love, but also on the ways he departs from them. For in at least one important respect, love is a closed book from Smith's standpoint, and thus, as it turns out, also at odds with classical friendship. (shrink)

Mouse embryonic stem cell lines offer an attractive route for introducing rare genetic alternations into the gene pool since the cells can be pre‐screened in culture and the mutations then transmitted into the germline through chimera production. Two applications of this technique seem ideally suited for a genetic analysis of development are enhancer and gene trap screens for loci expressed during gastrulation and production of targeted mutations using homologous recombination. These approaches should greatly increase the number of mouse developmental mutants (...) available and help to elucidate the genetic hierarchy controlling embryogenesis. (shrink)

Interpreting Figurative Meaning critically evaluates the recent empirical work from psycholinguistics and neuroscience examining the successes and difficulties associated with interpreting figurative language. There is now a huge, often contradictory literature on how people understand figures of speech. Gibbs and Colston argue that there may not be a single theory or model that adequately explains both the processes and products of figurative meaning experience. Experimental research may ultimately be unable to simply adjudicate between current models in psychology, linguistics and philosophy (...) of how figurative meaning is interpreted. Alternatively, the authors advance a broad theoretical framework, motivated by ideas from 'dynamical systems theory', that describes the multiple, interacting influences which shape people's experiences of figurative meaning in discourse. This book details past research and theory, offers a critical assessment of this work and sets the stage for a new vision of figurative experience in human life. (shrink)

Henrich et al.'s critical review demonstrating that psychology research is over-reliant on WEIRD samples is an important contribution to the field. Their stronger claim that is less convincing, however. We argue that WEIRD people's apparent distinct weirdness is a methodological side-effect of psychology's over-reliance on WEIRD populations for developing its methods and theoretical constructs.

PLATO’S Protagoras is composed of three distinct frames. The outer frame consists in Socrates’ brief discussion with an unnamed companion. The remainder of the Protagoras is willingly narrated by Socrates to the companion, from memory of course, and apparently right after the main action. The inner frame consists in Socrates’ dialogue with Hippocrates. Roused before dawn by the impetuous young man, Socrates leads Hippocrates to reflect on the wisdom of his enthusiastic desire to study with Protagoras. This is a classic (...) and successful little example of Socratic dialogue. He then takes Hippocrates to meet Protagoras; the bulk of the dialogue—call it the innermost frame—consists in Socrates’ exchanges with Protagoras. Hippocrates does not utter a word in this part of the dialogue, though it is initiated at his request and seems undertaken by Socrates for his benefit. (shrink)

Much critical attention to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason is devoted to two related concerns. The first is Kant's skeptical attack on the claims of pure reason to epistemic authority, where the focus is on the paralogisms and the antinomies of pure reason. The second involves Kant's refutation of idealism. These two concerns are of course intimately connected with one another and there are various ways to express that interconnection. Perhaps most generally it can be said that (...) Kant's assessment of reason in these two contexts is negative: it argues for the limitation of reason's claim to unbridled application and views reason as a faculty whose native propensity to seek such employment must be checked. Reason, as it turns out, is the great metaphysical impostor, whose representations, the ideas, have no epistemic warrant whatsoever. For it is the essence of Kant's position in the Dialectic that metaphysical conundra cannot be solved so long as reason arrogates to itself a direct and unrestricted epistemic or cognitive role and that reason ought to forebear from assigning itself any such status. Such a self-restriction of reason is, additionally, transcendentally necessary because it is that very limitation, Kant argues, that constitutes transcendental critique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Keats Bicentennial u To commemorate the bicentennial of the death of John Keats, the Institute for Digital Archaeaology, in collaboration with the Keats Shelley Memorial Association, has commissioned a series of poems inspired by the poet’s life and works, including the following pieces by UK Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage and poet and performance artist, Scarlett Sabet. All of the commissioned poems will be available in a new anthology (...) entitled Avernus’ Springs to be published by the Acensious Press in 2022. Roger L. Michel, Jr. u arion 28.3 winter 2021... (shrink)

This Article examines the influence of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on affective attitudes toward children with disabilities and on the incidence of disability-selective abortion. Applying regression analysis to U.S. natality data, we find that the birthrate of children with Down syndrome declined significantly in the years following the ADA's passage. Controlling for technological, demographic, and cultural variables suggests that the ADA may have encouraged prospective parents to prevent the existence of the very class of people the Act was (...) designed to protect. We explain this paradox by showing how specific ADA provisions could have given rise to demeaning media depictions and social conditions that reinforced negative understandings and expectations among prospective parents about what it means to have a child with a disability. We discuss implications for reproduction law and antidiscrimination policy. (shrink)