The Hastings Center and the early years of bioethics

The Hastings Center was founded in 1969 to study ethical problems in medicine and biology. The Center arose from a confluence of three social currents: the increased public scrutiny of medicine and its practices, the concern about the moral problems being generated by technological developments, and the desire of one its founders (Callahan) to make use of his philosophical training in a more applied way. The early years of the Center were devoted to raising money, developing an early agenda of issues, and identifying a cadre of people around the country interested in the issues. Various stresses and strains in the Center and the field are identified, and some final reflections are offered on the nature and value of the contributions made by bioethics as an academic field.     

A computer-controlled olfactometer for fMRI and electrophysiological studies of olfaction

A design for an inexpensive and reliable olfactometer is presented. The design has several advantages for fMRI and electrophysiology investigators. These advantages include relatively rapid odorant rise times, computer control, multiple odor administration, and no ferrous materials near the subjects. In addition, the device is contamination resistant, and, because the air is neither warmed nor humidified, it is unlikely to become an incubator for bacteria. The olfactometer is constructed of off-the-shelf chromatography parts that require little modification.     

Facilitation and impairment of event memory produced by photograph review

Selectively reviewing some items from a larger set of previously learned items increases memory for the items that are reviewed but may also be accompanied by a cost: Memory for the nonreviewed items may be impaired relative to cases where no review occurs at all. This cost to nonreviewed items has primarily been shown in contexts of verbal list learning and in situations where the reviewed and nonreviewed items are categorically or semantically related. Using a more naturalistic impetus to selective review--photographs relating to previously experienced events--we assessed whether the memory of older and younger adults for unrelated complex activities that they themselves had performed was also impaired due to nonreview. Both younger and older adults showed impaired memory for nonreviewed activities when tested with free recall (Experiment 1), but not when tested with recognition or cued recall (Experiment 2). If mitigating retrieval cues are unavailable, selective review may impair memory for nonreviewed everyday events.     

COMPETITION BETWEEN POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT IN THE TREATMENT OF ESCAPE BEHAVIOR

We compared the effects of reinforcing compliance with either positive reinforcement (edible items) or negative reinforcement (a break) on 5 participants' escape-maintained problem behavior. Both procedures were assessed with or without extinction. Results showed that compliance was higher and problem behavior was lower for all participants when compliance produced an edible item rather than a break. Treatment gains were achieved without the use of extinction. Results are discussed regarding the use of positive reinforcement to treat escape behavior.     

The Trouble with Harrison's 'The Trouble with Tarski'

In 'The Trouble with Tarski', The Philosophical Quarterly , 48 (1998), pp. 1–22, Jonathan Harrison attacks 'Tarski-style' truth theories for both formalized and natural languages, on the grounds that (1) truth cannot be a property of sentences; (2) if it could be, T-sentences would have to be necessary truths, which they are not; and (3) T-sentences are not necessarily true and can even can be false. I reply that (1) cannot be an objection to Tarskian truth theories, since these can be formulated in terms of whatever truth bearers might be. Thesis (2) is unjustified: Harrison's argument for it depends on an equivocation. Thesis (3) is false, since the right-hand side of a T-sentence is a meta-language translation of the object-language sentence described on the left-hand side, and this guarantees its truth.
email: boisvert@phil.ufl.edu     

Intrafamilial Separations in the Immigrant Family: Implications for Cross-Cultural Counseling

A structural family therapy (SFT) approach is combined with the paradigm of acculturation to increase counselors' sensitivity to a subcase of immigrant families, namely those whose members arrive at different times in the United States. The focus is on those families in which parents have preceded children in the immigration experience, which creates the challenging scenario of parents being more adapted to the host culture than their children. Written primarily for family counselors working with immigrant children and their parents, the article provides culturally sensitive counseling strategies based on a structural conceptualization of families, as well as suggestions for future research directions.