Pezdek and Lam [Pezdek, K. & Lam, S. . What research paradigms have cognitive psychologists used to study “False memory,” and what are the implications of these choices? Consciousness and Cognition] claim that the majority of research into false memories has been misguided. Specifically, they charge that false memory scientists have been misusing the term “false memory,” relying on the wrong methodologies to study false memories, and misapplying false memory research to real world situations. We review each of these claims (...) and highlight the problems with them. We conclude that several types of false memory research have advanced our knowledge of autobiographical and recovered memories, and that future research will continue to make significant contributions to how we understand memory and memory errors. (shrink)

Currently, research ethics committees in the UK meet behind closed doors—their workings and most of the content of their decisions are unavailable to the general public. There is a significant tension between this current practice and a broader societal presumption of openness. As a form of public institution, the REC system exists to oversee research from the perspective of society generally.An important part of this tension turns on the kind of justification that might be offered for the REC system. In (...) this paper I adapt Daniels and Sabin’s accountability for reasonableness model for just resource allocation to the research ethics context to provide some structural legitimacy and to enable progress on the question of openness. After considering the consequences of adopting this model for open REC meetings, I then examine some reasons that might be offered against open meetings. These arguments do not overwhelm the core intuitions behind the presumption of openness but they do, I suggest, give us reason to retreat from fully public meetings. I conclude that there should be important adjustments to the system towards public accountability and that there are grounds for stopping short of fully public meetings. (shrink)

This collection gives George Yancy's transformative work in social and political philosophy and the philosophy of race the critical attention it has long deserved. Contributors apply perspectives from disciplines including philosophy, sociology, education, communication, peace and conflict studies, religion, and psychology.

Background Institutional review board (IRB) expertise is necessarily limited by maintaining a manageable board size. IRBs are therefore permitted by regulation to rely on outside experts for review. However, little is known about whether, when, why, and how IRBs use outside experts.Methods We conducted a national survey of U.S. IRBs to characterize utilization of outside experts. Our study uses a descriptive, cross-sectional design to understand how IRBs engage with such experts and to identify areas where outside expertise is most frequently (...) requested.Results The survey response rate was 18.4%, with 55.4% of respondents reporting their institution’s IRB uses outside experts. Nearly all respondents who reported using outside experts indicated they do so less than once a month, but occasionally each year (95%). The most common method of identifying an outside expert was securing a previously known subject matter expert (83.3%). Most frequently, respondents sought consultation for scientific expertise not held by current members (69.6%). Almost all respondents whose IRBs had used outside experts reported an overall positive impact on the IRB review process (91.5%).Conclusions Just over half of the IRBs in our sample report use of outside experts; among them, outside experts were described as helpful, but their use was infrequent overall. Many IRBs report not relying on outside experts at all. This raises important questions about what type of engagement with outside experts should be viewed as optimal to promote the highest quality review. For example, few respondents sought assistance from a Community Advisory Board, which could address expertise gaps in community perspectives. Further exploration is needed to understand how to optimize IRB use of outside experts, including how to recognize when expertise is lacking, what barriers IRBs face in using outside experts, and perspectives on how outside expert review impacts IRB decision-making and review quality. (shrink)

Arendt's innovation is to recognize that this countenancing of others is an aesthetic experience that creates the political world.Curtis plumbs the relevance of ...

This collection gives George Yancy’s transformative work in social and political philosophy and the philosophy of race the critical attention it has long deserved. Contributors apply perspectives from disciplines including philosophy, sociology, education, communication, peace and conflict studies, religion, and psychology.

This study steps beyond the traditional arguments of feminism and examines homebirth from a libertarian perspective. It addresses the debate over homebirth and midwifery, which includes the use of direct-entry midwives as well as the philosophical implications of individual autonomy expressed through consumer choice. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that the medical establishment gains economic and political control primarily through medical licensing, and uses the state to undermine personal freedom as it advances a government-enforced monopoly on birth. At the same time, (...) empirical studies have established a substantial record of high safety and low medical complication rates for homebirth as compared to hospital births. Ultimately, the state’s restriction on medical choices is incompatible with the nonaggression principle and voluntarism, and therefore, with libertarianism. (shrink)

For the past 3 years, since acquiring formal training in healthcare ethics and philosophy, I have been one of those physicians who “does” ethics. I teach medical students and residents, write articles, speak at conferences, chair an ethics committee, and informally consult with colleagues on cases where they request advice related to ethical issues in the care of patients. These activities have been a rewarding and challenging part of my practice. There has also been a fair amount of frustration. Unfortunately, (...) both in teaching and patient care, it has been a frequent experience to finish a discussion with physicians only to be told that what I said was nice but had no bearing in the real world. In the words of a medical resident: 'You know, this ethics stuff is really a lot of crap, isn't it?'. (shrink)

A parallel may be drawn between the communicative aspect of civil disobedience and the communicative aspect of lawful punishment by the state. In punishing an offender, the state seeks to communicate both its condemnation of the crime committed and its desire for repentance and reformation on the part of the offender. Similarly, in civilly disobeying the law, a disobedient seeks to convey both her condemnation of a certain law or policy and her desire for recognition that a lasting change in (...) policy is required. When disobedients and authorities target each other, their confrontation allows for a direct comparison of the respective justifiability of their conduct. Their confrontation is explored in this paper with an eye to analysing how civil disobedients and authorities should engage with each other. (shrink)

In 1974, the United States Congress asked a question prompting a national conversation about ethics: which ethical principles should govern research involving human participants? To embark on an answer, Congress passed the National Research Act, and charged this task to the newly established National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Commission’s mandate was modest however, the results were anything but. The outcome was The Belmont Report: a trio of principles - respect for persons, (...) beneficence, and justice - serving as an ethical compass for scientists, researchers, and institutional review boards (IRBs). Almost 50 years later, the utility, legacy, and ingenuity of The Belmont Report continues to be both admired and challenged. Critics argue that Belmont is not fit for the 21st century, while supporters praise Belmont for its enduring wisdom. The goal of this paper is to equip IRB practitioners with the tools necessary to maximally interpret The Belmont Report and meaningfully engage in ethical analysis that reconsiders outmoded legacy thinking and fixed decision-making. Through historical and contextual reflection, this paper describes how IRB practitioners can contemporize review of ethical human research using their moral imagination – a skill found at the intersection of creativity, deliberation, and empathy. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy has largely neglected the topic of homelessness. The few notable exceptions, including work by Jeremy Waldron and Christopher Essert, focus on our interests in shelter, housing, and property rights, but ignore the key social functions that a home performs as a place in which we are welcomed, accepted, and respected. This paper identifies a ladder of home-related concepts which begins with the minimal notion of temporary shelter, then moves to persistent shelter and housing, and finally to the rich (...) notion of a home which focuses on meeting our social needs including, specifically, our needs to belong and to have meaningful control over our social environment. This concept-ladder enables us to distinguish the shelterless from the sheltered; the unhoused from the housed; and the unhomed from the homed. It also enables us to decouple the concept of a home from property rights, which reveals potential complications in people’s living arrangements. For instance, a person could be sheltered but unhoused, housed but homeless, or, indeed, unhoused but homed. We show that we should reserve the concept of home to capture the rich idea of a place of belonging in which our core social needs are met. (shrink)

Oxford Legal Philosophy publishes the best new work in philosophically-oriented legal theory. It commissions and solicits monographs in all branches of the subject, including works on philosophical issues in all areas of public and private law, and in the national, transnational, and international realms; studies of the nature of law, legal institutions, and legal reasoning; treatments of problems in political morality as they bear on law; and explorations in the nature and development of legal philosophy itself. The series represents diverse (...) traditions of thought but always with an emphasis on rigour and originality. It sets the standard in contemporary jurisprudence.This book shows that civil disobedience is generally more defensible than private conscientious objection.Part I explores the morality of conviction and conscience. Each of these concepts informs a distinct argument for civil disobedience. The conviction argument begins with the communicative principle of conscientiousness. According to the CPC, having a conscientious moral conviction means not just acting consistently with our beliefs and judging ourselves and others by a common moral standard. It also means not seeking to evade the consequences of our beliefs and being willing to communicate them to others. The conviction argument shows that, as a constrained, communicative practice, civil disobedience has a better claim than private objection does to the protections that liberal societies give to conscientious dissent. This view reverses the standard liberal picture which sees private 'conscientious' objection as a modest act of personal belief and civil disobedience as a strategic, undemocratic act whose costs are only sometimes worth bearing.The conscience argument is narrower and shows that genuinely morally responsive civil disobedience honours the best of our moral responsibilities and is protected by a duty-based moral right of conscience.Part II translates the conviction argument and conscience argument into two legal defences. The first is a demands-of-conviction defence. The second is a necessity defence. Both of these defences apply more readily to civil disobedience than to private disobedience. Part II also examines lawful punishment, showing that, even when punishment is justifiable, civil disobedients have a moral right not to be punished. (shrink)

"Dissecting Bioethics," edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics. The section is dedicated to the idea that words defined by bioethicists and others should not be allowed to imprison people's actual concerns, emotions, and thoughts. Papers that expose the many meanings of a concept, describe the different readings of a moral doctrine, or provide an alternative angle to seemingly self-evident issues are therefore particularly appreciated. The themes covered in the section (...) so far include dignity, naturalness, public interest, community, disability, autonomy, parity of reasoning, symbolic appeals, and toleration. (shrink)

In 2014, Ray Yeo published a modified account of the Spirit’s indwelling in “Towards a Model of the Indwelling: A Conversation with Jonathan Edwards and William Alston.” Yeo utilizes a conglomerate of Two-Minds Christology and Spirit Christology to provide a metaphysical framework for his model which he believes offers a viable alternative to more traditional merger accounts like those of Edwards and Alston. After providing an overview of Yeo’s objections to the merger accounts of Alston and Edwards, I will summarize (...) Yeo’s modified model. I will argue Yeo’s emphasis on the humanity of Christ in lieu of a literal, internal, and direct union of the Holy Spirit and the human person cannot alleviate the core metaphysical concerns which surface in all accounts of union between the divine and human. Yeo’s misunderstanding of Two-Minds Christology leads him to deny the full humanity of Christ; a humanity upon which his entire account of the indwelling relies. Yeo’s modified model will be shown unsuccessful as an account of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit even if one accepts both his conception of Two-Minds Christology and his conditions for indwelling. (shrink)

Brownlee rethinks human rights theory to reflect the fact that we are deeply social creatures. Our core social needs, for meaningful social inclusion, are more important than, and essential to, our civil, political, and economic needs. This grounds a right against social deprivation and a right to the resources to sustain other people.

Cornish suggests that, because they were in the same class at school, Wittgenstein was the specific target of Hitler's bile in Mein Kampf, and that Hitler's beliefs about Jews came from the experience of meeting Wittgenstein at this time.

In the Early Modern era of encyclopedias, the Bible functioned as a tool for managing and organizing the superabundance of information. From Johann Alsted to Johann Scheuchzer, this paper traces the use of the Biblical encyclopedia and the ways that the Bible was deployed to control the data that flooded the world of Early Modern scholarship. In a variety of contexts, the Bible served as a structure for generating meaningful statements from informational noise. In turn, the use of the Bible (...) as a principle of organization would have profound implications for the status of the Bible in Early Modern scholarly culture. (shrink)

Pfeiffer, Kimberley We've heard it happening more than once. A couple uses IVF to fall pregnant then later down the track they conceive naturally. Confusing, right? Aren't they supposed to be infertile? Isn't that why people request this invasive and expensive procedure in the first place? Well, a recent study shows that more than 40% of women aged between 28 and 36 years that report having a history of infertility achieved subsequent births without using any form of reproductive assistance1. (...) Which raises the question, what does it mean to be infertile? (shrink)

Pfeiffer, Kimberley Review of: Conflicts of Conscience in Health Care: An Institutional Compromise, by Holly Fernandez-Lynch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2008.

The quality of a research study application sends a distinct signal to the institutional review board (IRB) about the skills, capacities, preparation, communication, experience, and resources of its authors. However, efforts to research and define IRB application quality have been insufficient. Inattention to the quality of an IRB application is consequential because the application precedes IRB review, and perceptions of quality between the two may be interrelated and interdependent. Without a clear understanding of quality, IRBs do not know how to (...) define quality and researchers do not know how to achieve quality. This position has not been systematically studied to date, and future research could provide much-needed empirical validation. This paper lays the conceptual groundwork for future investigation into what constitutes quality in an IRB application. It includes a landscape review of multidisciplinary research on quality, as well as a discussion of quality frameworks analogous to research with human participants that exist in the published literature. It also examines the background and significance of federal research regulations, regulatory burdens, researchers’ regulatory literacy, and the roles and responsibilities of IRB professionals within this ecosystem. (shrink)

have recently provided a compelling demonstration of enhanced attentional control under post-hypnotic suggestion. Using the classic color-word interference paradigm, in which the task is to ignore a word and to name the color in which it is printed (e.g., RED in green, say ''green''), they gave a post-hypnotic instruction to participants that they would be unable to read. This eliminated Stroop interference in high suggestibility participants but did not alter interference in low suggestibility participants. replicated this pattern and further demonstrated (...) that it is not due to a visual strategy (such as blurring or looking at a different location). As a historical footnote, we describe a ''case study'' from 18 years ago in which we observed the same result using a hypnotic instruction to a single highly suggestible individual that he could not read. The elimination of Stroop interference has important implications for both the study of attention and the study of hypnosis. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to think through some of the problems of idolatry and sacrifice for the early modern period and more generally, for the constitution of religious and political community. In particular, it argues that the altars of the idols condensed two problems: first, the problem of communion, and specifically the Protestant ability to communicate with God; and second, the problem of distinction. At a time when the nature of the religious polity was in question, the analysis of (...) idolatry and sacrifice produced a conceptual structure for understanding, in anthropological fashion, the very constitution of religious and political community. In fact, this essay will suggest, this structure lives on, alive and well, among modern theorists seeking to diagnose the ailments of modernity. (shrink)

Values -- Tolerance -- Tolerant people -- Being tolerant of family -- Being tolerant of friends -- Being tolerant of neighbours -- Ways to be tolerant -- Being aware of others -- Respecting different kinds of families -- Accepting other cultures -- Including others -- Learning from others -- Being patient -- Personal set of values.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.4 (2006) 561-569 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Introduction: Thinking about Idols in Early Modern EuropeJonathan Sheehan University of MichiganAbstractThis essay is an introduction to a collection of six articles on early modern debates about idolatry. If the debates started in religion, however, they quickly generated political, philosophical, anthropological, and even scientific corollaries. These may appear to be abstract and theoretical questions, but (...) they produced a complex set of answers with important consequences for many people. To see what was at stake, we need look no further than the New World and its missions. If the most frequently cited texts in the collection of articles are Bartolomé de las Casas and José de Acosta, it is because the New World forced the reality of idolatry onto the wider European stage.When does an image become a god? The early Christian apologist Minucius Felix had an answer. A log "is cut, is hewn, is planed," and is still no god. A stone "is sculptured, and is polished by some abandoned man" and still is no god. A sculpture "is set up, and even yet it is not a god." But, "lo, it is adorned, it is consecrated, it is prayed to—then at length it is a god, when man has chosen it to be so, and for the purpose has dedicated it." 1If only it were that easy. Felix offered just half of the story as David Freedberg has argued. Veneration does not produce that unhealthy power that idols exert over the attentive viewer. Rather, the opposite is true: idols are venerated because they exert this power. All images seem to contain at least traces of it. They draw our eye with ineluctable command, and force themselves on our attention. The image is just a representation, of course. It has been made by humans and can only ever gesture to an absent presence. And yet, images are also effective. Their ability to move us depends on "the possibility of fusion" between image and prototype. The crucifix is always only wood or stone, but its power comes from what might be called, with Freedberg, a "sacred contagion" that penetrates from behind the veil of representation. Indeed, its value as a religious object depends on this [End Page 561] contagion. Worshipers know that those tears shed by the Virgin in anguish at Christ's broken body are, in reality, just paint over mute stone and wood. Nevertheless, they are moved by those specks of material. If not, why have a statue in the first place? "The miraculous object has an effectiveness that proceeds as if the original body were present," Freedberg notes, "but the difficulty lies in cognitively grasping that 'as if.'" 2 Men do not choose to invest images with power over their imaginations and intellects. Even before images are prayed to, before they are consecrated, they already have that power.Whatever one thinks of the phenomenology of images, there is no doubt that this super-human power of idols obsessed many people in the early modern period. An object that had no power to inspire attention and devotion was hardly a threat, after all. The enormous waves of iconoclasm that swept across Europe—Germany in the 1520s, Scotland in the late 1550s, the Netherlands in the 1560s, England in the 1640s—were not directed at decorative tiles, pews, or doorstops. They were directed exactly at those things that made the devout feel the presence of the divine. And no one was quicker to identify these powerful images than the breakers themselves, who, in their extreme acts of rage, confirmed the effects that these supposedly dead bits of wood and stone exerted over them. The man in Ulm in 1534 who defecated into "the mouth of an effigy of Christ" demonstrated his extreme revulsion at what was, in reality, merely a lump of brute material. 3 Perhaps, if asked, he would have insisted that his scatological exuberance was designed to show definitively the impotence of the... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Gorgias presents us with a mystery and an enigma: Who was Callicles? And, what was Plato trying to accomplish in this dialogue? While searching for the identity of Callicles, we gain a better understanding of Plato's purpose for this dialogue, which is to use justice as a means for staking out the boundaries of four types of rhetoric. This article argues that Plato uses the Gorgias to reveal the deficiencies of sophistic nomos-centered rhetorics and an unjust sophistic phusis-centered (...) rhetoric, opening the door for a “true” rhetoric that he articulates in the Phaedrus and a universal justice based on virtue that he describes in the Republic. (shrink)

Cornish suggests that, because they were in the same class at school, Wittgenstein was the specific target of Hitler's bile in Mein Kampf, and that Hitler's beliefs about Jews came from the experience of meeting Wittgenstein at this time.

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 566-585.