From Incommensurability to Dialogue: A Response to David Lichtenstein

This response to David Lichtenstein (this issue) explores the opportunities and challenges that arise from the conceptual pluralism within the field of psychoanalysis. It argues that the Kleinian and Lacanian theoretical frameworks are in many ways incommensurable, but it also maintains that this should not translate into an either/or approach that privileges one framework over the other. Acknowledging the foundational differences between Kleinian and Lacanian theories should not forestall the possibility of productive and mutually beneficial dialogue carried out in good faith.     

Institutional Review Boards: From Bane to Benefit

ABSTRACT— Institutional review boards (IRBs) are primarily prevention-focused, avoiding damage to human subjects and averting ethical infractions, thereby protecting participants, researchers, and universities. Yet, the cost of prevention focus is simply avoiding negative outcomes and is enacted through control, risk-aversion, security, detail-orientation, reactivity, anxiety, avoidance, punishment, negative possibilities, and seizing on a single dominant solution. These endanger the research enterprise. An alternative promotion focus is more advantageous as it seeks positive outcomes and thus facilitating research, which is the IRB's second duty. This alternative guides recruiting and training of staff, panel, and researchers; orienting to and reinforcing promotion norms; creating well-known, transparent, responsive, and efficient processes; and understanding the IRB's boundaries. Promotion balances prevention to make IRBs support research and protect subjects.     

To Value and Address Diversity: From Policy to Practice

A basic assumption of Target 3 of the National Agenda is that the rates of identification, placement, and achievement of children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance (SED) are strongly correlated with dimensions of diversity, such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and culture. A related assumption is that culturally competent and linguistically appropriate exchanges and collaborations among families, professionals, students, and communities will enable our school systems to achieve better educational outcomes for all children, including those with SED. We discuss these assumptions in the context of current policies and suggest ways of translating these policies into practices.     

Consequentialism,Animal Ethics,and the Value of Valuing

Peter Singer argues, on consequentialist grounds, that individuals ought to be vegetarian. Many have pressed, in response, a causal impotence objection to Singer’s argument: any individual person’s refraining from purchasing and consuming animal products will not have an important effect on contemporary farming practices. In this article, I sketch a Singer-inspired consequentialist argument for vegetarianism that avoids this objection. The basic idea is that, for agents who are aware of the origins of their food, continuing to consume animal products is morally bad because it leads to not appropriately disvaluing the origins of their food. That is a morally bad outcome that can be avoided by becoming vegetarian.     

From Treasure to Trash: The Lingering Value of Technological Artifacts

Science and Engineering Ethics - Electronic waste (e-waste) is the fastest growing form of waste worldwide, associated with a range of environmental, health, and justice problems. Unfortunately,...     

From Games to Giving: Social Value Orientation Predicts Donations to Noble Causes

The central purpose of the present research is to examine the ability of social value orientation (i.e., prosocial, individualistic, and competitive orientation), as measured with methods rooted in game theory (i.e., decomposed games), to predict real-life prosocial behavior. Consistent with hypotheses, results revealed that individual differences in social value orientation are predictive of various donations. Relative to individualists and competitors, prosocials reported to engage in a greater number of donations, especially donations to organizations aimed at helping the poor and the ill. Results are discussed in terms of theory and methodology regarding the individual differences in social value orientation, as well as in terms of societal implications for enhancing donations to noble causes.     

Caring for Nature: From Fact to Value, from Respect to Reverence

Abstract. Despite the classical prohibition of moving from fact to value, encounter with the biodiversity and plenitude of being in evolutionary natural history moves us to respect life, even to reverence it. Darwinian accounts are value‐laden and necessary for understanding life at the same time that Darwinian theory fails to provide sufficient cause for the historically developing diversity and increasing complexity on Earth. Earth is a providing ground; matter and energy on Earth support life, but distinctive to life is information coded in the genetic molecules that superintends this matter‐energy. Life is generated and regenerated in struggle, persists in its perishing. Such life is also a gift; nature is grace. Biologists and theologians join in celebrating and conserving the genesis on Earth, awed in their encounter with this creativity that characterizes our home planet.     

大卫·帕金斯的"真智力"理论述评

本文从帕金斯的神经智力、经验智力和反省智力理论出发,详细阐述了他的真智力理论,并探讨了这三者之间相互强化、相互补偿的协作关系.同时还对真智力理论进行了基本的评价.     

Homage to David Thomasma: Introduction

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Ethics of Risk Analysis and Regulatory Review: From Bio- to Nanotechnology

Risk analysis and regulatory systems are usually evaluated according to utilitarian frameworks, as they are viewed to operate “objectively” by considering the health, environmental, and economic impacts of technological applications. Yet, the estimation of impacts during risk analysis and the decisions in regulatory review are affected by value choices of actors and stakeholders; attention to principles such as autonomy, justice, and integrity; and power relationships. In this article, case studies of biotechnology are used to illustrate how non-utilitarian principles are prominent in risk analysis and regulatory review and to argue that these relationships should be carefully considered as we consider nanotechnology oversight systems for its products. We argue that there are not distinct separations between “science-based” review systems, in which evaluations of the consequences of technological products are primarily considered, and principles of integrity, justice, non-maleficence, and autonomy. It should further be expected that, given research into fair treatment during decision-making processes, attention to ethics will affect how citizens assess emerging technologies. Finally, a more holistic approach for evaluating oversight systems for the products of nanotechnology is suggested, one which does not draw a sharp distinction between risk analysis, regulation, and respect for non-utilitarian values.