BackgroundArtificial intelligence has been described as the “fourth industrial revolution” with transformative and global implications, including in healthcare, public health, and global health. AI approaches hold promise for improving health systems worldwide, as well as individual and population health outcomes. While AI may have potential for advancing health equity within and between countries, we must consider the ethical implications of its deployment in order to mitigate its potential harms, particularly for the most vulnerable. This scoping review addresses the following question: (...) What ethical issues have been identified in relation to AI in the field of health, including from a global health perspective?MethodsEight electronic databases were searched for peer reviewed and grey literature published before April 2018 using the concepts of health, ethics, and AI, and their related terms. Records were independently screened by two reviewers and were included if they reported on AI in relation to health and ethics and were written in the English language. Data was charted on a piloted data charting form, and a descriptive and thematic analysis was performed.ResultsUpon reviewing 12,722 articles, 103 met the predetermined inclusion criteria. The literature was primarily focused on the ethics of AI in health care, particularly on carer robots, diagnostics, and precision medicine, but was largely silent on ethics of AI in public and population health. The literature highlighted a number of common ethical concerns related to privacy, trust, accountability and responsibility, and bias. Largely missing from the literature was the ethics of AI in global health, particularly in the context of low- and middle-income countries.ConclusionsThe ethical issues surrounding AI in the field of health are both vast and complex. While AI holds the potential to improve health and health systems, our analysis suggests that its introduction should be approached with cautious optimism. The dearth of literature on the ethics of AI within LMICs, as well as in public health, also points to a critical need for further research into the ethical implications of AI within both global and public health, to ensure that its development and implementation is ethical for everyone, everywhere. (shrink)

Bioethical Proposals to Face Social and Ethical Problems Generated by Neglected Infectious Diseases Propostas bioéticas ante os problemas sociais e éticos que geram as doenças infecciosas desatendidas This review article appointed to the topic of Neglected Tropical Diseases, a group of 18 disabling pathologies, which are sometimes fatal, and often deforming, that prevail in the populations of Asia, Africa and the tropical areas of South America. We presented, categorized, and analyzed, through a bibliographical review, the elements that relate to these (...) diseases from the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, 2005, in terms of equality, justice and equity, the non-discrimination and stigmatization, social responsibility and health approach. Throughout the review, we concluded that the problem around NTDs is multifactorial and we propose solutions to mitigate and to attend the NTDs, from a perspective of focused bioethics around the dignity of the human person and the affected population. We proposed including bioethics in the debate about the care of the NTDs to analyze the problems and examine solutions through transdisciplinary research projects that involve collaborative and formative work among the affected communities, government entities, health professionals and veterinary sciences. Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Sáenz V, Mazzanti di Ruggiero MA. Propuestas bioéticas frente a los problemas sociales y éticos que generan las enfermedades infecciosas desatendidas. Pers Bioet. 2019; 23: 84-110. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2019.23.1.6 Recepción: 27/09/2018 Aceptación: 06/02/2019. (shrink)

Research Ethics Committees have the responsibility to protect the participants involved in researches and to guarantee the ethical behavior of researchers. In some institutions, such committees also review scientific projects of non-pharmaceutical areas, Public Health and Health Economics. Within this framework, the article analyzes what it means to be part of a Research Ethics Committee in a hospital or university based on personal experience as a community representative. By means of the convenience sampling technique, implemented in four Colombian cities that (...) have GCP-certified committees by INVIMA –National Institute for the Control of Medications and Food–, and by means of content analysis, based on fixed and emergent categories; the experience, perception, participation, representation, and ethical aspects are described as well as the learning process and personal contributions. Findings prove that representatives interviewed have been benefited by learning clinic and epidemiological aspects without necessarily being “experts in the community”. However, they seem not to recognize clearly the population they represent, which might lead these communities to being affected by certain particular studies. The article suggests to work on the minimal common elements that a community representative should possess to appropriately protect participants. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed a growing number of states around the world relying on border control measures, such as immigration detention, to govern human mobility and control the movements of those classified as “unauthorised non-citizens.” In response to this, an increasing number of scholars from several disciplines, including psychologists, have begun to examine this phenomenon. In spite of the widespread concerns raised, few studies have been conducted inside immigration detention sites, primarily due to difficulties in gaining access. This body of (...) research becomes even scanter when it comes to the experiences of detained women. This study is the first of its kind to have surveyed 93 women confined in an Italian immigration detention facility. A partial mediation model with latent variables was tested through partial least structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings revealed the negative impact that unfair immigration procedures have on detained women’s human dignity, which in turn negatively affects their self-rated physical and mental health. Overall, our study sheds light on the dehumanisation and damage to human dignity that immigration detention entails, as well as its negative impact on the health of those affected. This evidence reinforces the image of these institutions as sites of persistent injustice, while stressing the need to envision alternative justice-oriented forms to address human mobility. (shrink)

This review discussed the effects of the impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic on the psychological wellbeing of people with Parkinson's disease focusing specifically on depressive symptoms, anxiety levels, sleep, and quality of life. Together with motor symptoms, psychological symptoms are common and disabling conditions in the clinical course of PD becoming a relevant topic as a result of the lockdown measure due to alter their everyday life. We searched on PubMed online electronic databases for English articles published between (...) January 2020 and 31 December 2021. Twenty-eight relevant studies were found and included in the review. Heterogeneous data emerged from the topics analyzed. Overall, data from depression studies showed significant depressive symptoms if the patient was analyzed longitudinally or vs. a control group consisting in healthy subjects, while these differences become minimal when the control group is a family member. Differently, in most of the studies reviewed there is no evidence of a statistically significant impact on anxiety disorders, nor on the quality of sleep. Conversely, PD patients showed a statistically significant negative impact of QoL compared with control groups or other neurological conditions. Although these findings must be interpreted carefully in the light of the studies' limitations, both in methodology and design, collectively our review showed that COVID-19 pandemic has had negative effects on the mental health of people with PD, due to disruption of healthcare services, loss of usual activities and supports and reduction in physical activity. (shrink)

Nel contesto della presente crisi climatica ed ambientale, istituzioni pubbliche e private promuovono la costruzione di ‘infrastrutture viventi’. L’articolo analizza l’economia biopolitica che caratterizza questi progetti, concentrandosi sull’infrastrutturalizzazione del pioppo: un genus botanico ampiamente utilizzato come ‘barriera contro la desertificazione’, ‘struttura di fitorisanamento’, e ‘pozzo di assorbimento di anidride carbonica’. Questi progetti mobilizzano il metabolismo della cellula vivente, dando forma a nuove reti di potere bio-infrastrutturale ed elaborate strategie di accumulazione del capitale.

As visual technologies become increasingly networked online, websites like YouTube provide a space to share vlogs online, suggest related content for viewers, and help in/form virtual communities, including those of mental illness. Within this space, vlogs of schizophrenia and comments generated about them by other users can represent transitional, dialogical states of illness that speak back to the analog body and affect a body’s way of being in the world. Moreover, as vlogs create resistance against static definitions of schizophrenia, they (...) may foster a creativity, experimentation, and inventiveness that transforms understandings of schizophrenia within the sciences and humanities. (shrink)

L’indagine filosofica riserva da sempre grande attenzione alle questioni riguardanti la natura del linguaggio e della comunicazione. Recentemente, nel contesto della scienza cognitiva, sono stati avanzati tentativi esplicativi promettenti, sulla base di un assunto fondamentale: i modelli concettuali devono essere vincolati alla ricerca empirica. Il testo curato da Francesco Ferretti e Daniele Gambarara si fa portavoce di questa esigenza di dialogo tra scienza e filosofia, in opposizione ad un...

This article aims to explain and clarify the controversial textual issue over which manuscripts should be preferred in an edition of Sulpicius Severus’ Martinellus. In particular, Ruggiero examines the case of the Letters. Firstly, he shows that there is only one contaminated textual tradition, as proven by the numerous adiaphoristic variants. Secondly, he shows that the manuscripts from the French-German area are superior to those from the Italic peninsula and some insular areas, as they provide a much more elegant (...) and correct text. This is consistent with our knowledge of Sulpicius Severus’ higher literary education. In publishing the Martinellus, it is therefore advisable to follow the variants of the French-German manuscripts, whereas the ones of the Italian manuscripts are to be taken into account only in the case of obvious errors. Consequently, Ruggiero maintains that the editions that predate Halm’s should be rated much more highly than they are. (shrink)

Emergent phenomena can be weak or strong. The former reflect epistemic limits and are ontologically innocent. The latter instantiate properties and powers not had by their components, and they are genuine, novel entities of the world. In this paper, I first show that this view rests upon two metaphysical assumptions: the Eleatic principle, and a power-based view of causation. Then, I suggest that these assumptions should be discussed, rather than passively accepted, and this for three reasons at least: British Emergentism (...) did not require them; they pave the way to relevant objections against the autonomy of emergent phenomena; they provide a too narrow metaphysical frame for emergence. (shrink)

The complex and long genesis of the Daodejing is widely known. Whether it was originally composed by a single author, the legendary Laozi, or whether it emerged over time as a sort of collective anthology ancient sayings, the text underwent countless changes made by copyists and commentators over the centuries, and the Daodejing extensively published today is clearly something different from its first (and second) versions. For this reason, as well as for the nature of Chinese thought itself, it seems (...) inappropriate to search for a philosophical “system” in the Daodejing. Nonetheless, the text can shed light on the view of nature permeating classical China. The paper will focus on three issues. The first is the ontological non-individualization of the Dao, which is the counterpart to the epistemological individualization of the human and social world. The second is the kind of metaphysics that can frame these features: a metaphysics of diachronic events, processes, and emergences, rather than a synchronic metaphysics of objects, substances, and monadic properties. The third, finally, is the fragmenting power of language, which through naming and knowledge creates that individualization that splits the undivided unity of the Dao. (shrink)

This article seeks to establish that the social sciences have an important contribution to make to the study of ethics. The discussion is framed around three questions: (i) what theoretical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? (ii) what empirical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? And (iii) how does this theoretical and empirical work combine, to enhance the understanding of how ethics, as a field of analysis and debate, is socially (...) constituted and situated? Through these questions the argument goes beyond the now commonly cited objection to the over‐simplistic division between normative and descriptive ethics (that assigns the social sciences the ‘handmaiden’ role of simply providing the ‘facts’). In extending this argument, this article seeks to establish, more firmly and in more detail, that: (a) the social sciences have a longstanding theoretical interest analysing the role that a concern with ethics plays in explanations of social change, social organisation and social action; (b) the explanations that are based on the empirical investigations conducted by social scientists exemplify the interplay of epistemological and methodological analyses so that our understanding of particular substantive issues is extended beyond the conventional questions raised by ethicists, and (c) through this combination of theoretical and empirical work, social scientists go beyond the specific ethical questions of particular practices to enquire further into the social processes that lie behind the very designation of certain matters as being ‘ethical issues’. (shrink)

This article seeks to establish that the social sciences have an important contribution to make to the study of ethics. The discussion is framed around three questions: (i) what theoretical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? (ii) what empirical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? And (iii) how does this theoretical and empirical work combine, to enhance the understanding of how ethics, as a field of analysis and debate, is socially (...) constituted and situated? Through these questions the argument goes beyond the now commonly cited objection to the over‐simplistic division between normative and descriptive ethics (that assigns the social sciences the ‘handmaiden’ role of simply providing the ‘facts’). In extending this argument, this article seeks to establish, more firmly and in more detail, that: (a) the social sciences have a longstanding theoretical interest analysing the role that a concern with ethics plays in explanations of social change, social organisation and social action; (b) the explanations that are based on the empirical investigations conducted by social scientists exemplify the interplay of epistemological and methodological analyses so that our understanding of particular substantive issues is extended beyond the conventional questions raised by ethicists, and (c) through this combination of theoretical and empirical work, social scientists go beyond the specific ethical questions of particular practices to enquire further into the social processes that lie behind the very designation of certain matters as being ‘ethical issues’. (shrink)

Climate change adaptation is largely a local matter, and adaptation planning can benefit from local climate change projections. Such projections are typically generated by accepting climate model outputs in a relatively uncritical way. We argue, based on the IPCC’s treatment of model outputs from the CMIP5 ensemble, that this approach is unwarranted and that subjective expert judgment should play a central role in the provision of local climate change projections intended to support decision-making.

Los cinco estudios que componen este volumen estan dedicados a mostrar que es posible abordar el estudio de un film y por extension del cine en su conjunto a partir de fragmentos minimos extraidos de una obra concreta. Concebidos con una metodologia unitaria intentan, limitando al maximo el uso de esa jerga especializada que suele hacer de muralla entre el analista y el lector, proporcionar instrumentos operativos para todos aquellos que conciben el cine como territorio donde saber y placer no (...) solo no estan renidos sino que se refuerzan mutuamente. Los ejemplos han sido tomados, conscientemente, de obras al mismo tiempo muy conocidas y suficientemente representativas de determinadas maneras de hacer. Se ha huido de toda normatividad con la finalidad de hacer buena la frase de S.M. Eisenstein cuando recordaba a sus discipulos que el no podia ensenarles nada, pero ellos si que podian aprender mucho. Equidistante del moderno analisis formalista y de la tradicion clasica que reivindicaba la primacia del contenido, el tipo de trabajo patente en estas paginas reivindica el lugar central del texto filmico y sus texturas singulares en los nuevos estudios cinematograficos. (shrink)

Humeans and anti-Humeans agree that laws of nature should explain scientifically particular matters of fact. One objection to Humean accounts of laws contends that Humean laws cannot explain particular matters of fact because their explanations are harmfully circular. This article distinguishes between metaphysical and semantic characterizations of the circularity and argues for a new semantic version of the circularity objection. The new formulation suggests that Humean explanations are harmfully circular because the content of the sentences being explained is part of (...) the content of the sentences doing the explaining. I describe the nature of partial content and demonstrate how this account of partial content renders Humean explanations ineffective while sparing anti-Humean explanations from the same fate. 1Introduction2Standard Formulations of the Circularity Charge3Humean Responses4Semantic Characterizations of the Circularity Worry 4.1Hempel and Oppenheim’s semantic circularity concern4.2A new version of the semantic circularity charge4.3Partial content as a guide to circularity5Humean Responses to the Semantic Circularity Charge 5.1Smuggling in metaphysics through the back door?5.2Do anti-Humean laws fare any better?5.3The over-generalization concern6ConclusionAppendix. (shrink)

Identity and distinctness facts are ones like “The Eiffel Tower is identical to the Eiffel Tower,” and “The Eiffel Tower is distinct from the Louvre.” This paper concerns one question in the metaphysics of identity: Are identity and distinctness facts metaphysically fundamental or are they nonfundamental? I provide an overview of answers to this question.

Evidence-based medicine has beendefined as the conscientious and judicious useof current best evidence in making clinicaldecisions. This paper will attempt to explicatethe terms ``conscientious'''' and ``judicious''''within the evidence-based medicine definition.It will be argued that ``conscientious'''' and``judicious'''' represent virtue terms derived fromvirtue ethics and virtue epistemology. Theidentification of explicit virtue components inthe definition and therefore conception ofevidence-based medicine presents an importantstarting point in the connection between virtuetheories and medicine itself. In addition, aunification of virtue theories andevidence-based medicine will illustrate theneed for (...) future research in order to combinethe fields of virtue-based approaches andclinical practice. (shrink)

'When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?' - Michel de Montaigne. Why do we live with pets? Is there something more to our relationship with them than simply companionship? What is it we look for in our pets and what does this say about us as human beings? In this fascinating book, Erica Fudge explores the nature of this most complex of relationships and the (...) difficulties of knowing what it is that one is living with when one chooses to share a home with an animal. Fudge argues that our capacity for compassion and ability to live alongside others is evident in our relationships with our pets, those paradoxical creatures who give us a sense of comfort and security while simultaneously troubling the categories human and animal. For what is a pet if it isn't a fully-fledged member of the human family? This book proposes that by crossing over these boundaries pets help construct who it is we think we are. Drawing on the works of modern writers, such as J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Jacques Derrida, Fudge shows how pets have been used to think with and to undermine our easy conceptions of human, animal and home. Indeed, "Pets" shows our obsession with domestic animals that reveals many of the paradoxes, contra - dictions and ambiguities of life. Living with pets provides thought-provoking perspectives on our notions of possession and mastery, mutuality and cohabitation, love and dominance. We might think of pets as simply happy, loved additions to human homes but as this captivating book reveals perhaps it is the pets that make the home and without pets perhaps we might not be the humans we think we are. For anyone who has ever wondered, like Montaigne, what their cat is thinking, it will be illuminating reading. (shrink)

This paper offers a metaphysical explanation of the identity and distinctness of concrete objects. It is tempting to try to distinguish concrete objects on the basis of their possessing different qualitative features, where qualitative features are ones that do not involve identity. Yet, this criterion for object identity faces counterexamples: distinct objects can share all of their qualitative features. This paper suggests that in order to distinguish concrete objects we need to look not only at which properties and relations objects (...) instantiate but also how they instantiate these properties and relations. I propose that objects are identical when they stand in certain qualitative relations in virtue of their existence. And concrete objects are distinct when they do not stand in the same kinds of relations to one another in virtue of their existence. (shrink)

I provide a new account of what it is for the laws of nature to govern the evolution of events. I locate the source of governance in the content of law propositions. As such, I do not appeal to primitive notions of ground, essence, or production to characterize governance. After introducing the account, I use it to outline previously unrecognized varieties of governance. I also specify that laws must govern to have two theoretical virtues: explanatory power as well as a (...) theoretical virtue I call expansiveness. A theory is expansive, roughly, when it can do more with less. (shrink)

Identity criteria are powerful tools for the metaphysician. They tell us when items are identical or distinct. Some varieties of identity criteria also try to explain in virtue of what items are identical or distinct. This Element has two objectives: to discuss formulations of identity criteria and to take a closer look at one notorious criterion of object identity, Leibniz's Law. The first section concerns the form of identity criteria. The second section concerns the better-regarded half of Leibniz's Law, the (...) indiscernibility of identicals. The third section turns to the more controversial half of Leibniz's Law, the identity of indiscernibles. The author considers alternatives to Leibniz's Law as well as the possibility that there are no adequate identity criteria to be found. (shrink)