Taking Ethical Disability Seriously

Aristotle's ethical theorizing contains resources for explaining what I call 'ethical disability'. In theories such as Kant's and Mill's it is important that criteria of right action be accessible to anyone. Aristotle's moral psychology yields a plausible account of how they are not available to everyone. Unless a correct appreciation of good is part of the agent's second nature, the agent will not recognize ethical requirements, and will not have the resources to alter his judgments. Often, bad action is not a matter of agents' flouting or violating criteria of right action that they recognize, but is a matter of agents' regarding as choiceworthy things that are in fact no good, and the agents are unable to appreciate this because of their vices. However, on the Aristotelian view, this is not a condition that diminishes responsibility, because of how voluntariness is interpreted. Some of the views of Susan Wolf and Bernard Williams are discussed in the development of this view of the moral landscape.     

'Questions, questions, questions!' A comparison of therapist inferences and parental responses to systemic questions

Using a specially designed questionnaire, we examined the relationship between parental responses to systemic questions, therapists'views based upon these responses and parental reports of dysfunction in a member of the family. The questionnaire was completed by parents of a randomly selected population sample of adolescents and by experienced family therapists. Therapists made inferences that were predictable, coherent and reliable. They gave most salience to the concept of'enmeshment'and least to'hostile-discordant'functioning. Some enmeshed answers were favoured by substantial proportions of parents, suggesting that they may reflect normal variants of family functioning. However no associations between total enmeshment scores and reported mental health problems were found. Hostile-discordant functioning, as assessed in this study, was rare in the general population sample, but was associated with reported problems.     

Review of family treatment studies in israel

Much of the culturally specific knowledge about helping families in Israel is not readily available; either it is not in English and often appears in local circulation publications or is interwoven in the larger fabric of family treatment literature. This paper attempts to present the knowledge about helping families that has emerged in Israel based on an extensive literature review of all known work in Hebrew and English since 1980 that is related to studying and treating family problems in Israel. Major works, particularly research findings are highlighted. Recommendations for future research in this broad area are given.Revised on October 13, 1994 forContemporary Family Therapy. The author wishes to thank Nomi Mey-Ami for her vital assistance in compling the source material. The complete bibliographic listing is available in Hebrew from the Information Retrieval Center for Research in Social Sciences Henrietta Szold Institute in Jerusalem.     

Public health concerns take center stage in Nuffield Council on Bioethics

Summary Nonhuman primates represent an important reservoir for the transmission of new infectious diseases to humans. While several working groups and international agencies have grappled with the ethics of xenotransplantation, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics have recently published a comprehensive and far-reaching series of recommendations that, while not eliminating the infectious disease risks, have nonetheless detailed the major points for concern and have developed a rational approach to minimizing these risks. This report should serve as the blueprint from which to proceed with xenotransplantation. Dr. Allan’s research focuses on simian retroviruses, including simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIV).     

Conditioning experiences in spider phobics.

Using the Phobic Origin Questionnaire (Ost, L. G. & Hugdahl, K. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 19, 439-477, 1981), the present study examined the extent to which severe spider phobics (N = 42) attributed their phobia to conditioning experiences, modeling experiences and/or informational learning experiences. Modeling was most often reported (71%), followed by conditioning (57%), and informational learning experiences (45%). It was also found that patients with a conditioning background reported less extreme cognitive symptoms when confronted with the phobic stimulus than patients with an indirect mode of acquisition (modeling and/or informational learning).     

Capital punishment in Missouri: Examining the issue of racial disparity

Guided discretion statutes were designed to control arbitrariness and discrimination in capital sentencing. Using data from Supplemental Homicide Reports and Trial Judge Reports, this article examines the issue of racial disparity in Missouri's capital punishment process from 1977 through 1991. Findings from the three decision points examined suggest racial bias against the killers of whites, particularly if the offender is black, and a concomitant devaluation of black victims. The strongest effects noted are in the prosecutor's decision to charge homicide offenders with capital murder and to proceed to penalty trial in convicted capital murder cases. While the effects are not necessarily limited to the least aggravated categories, the effects of race are strongest when prosecutors and jurors are freed from the seriousness of the cases to consider other factors. The racial disparities are also apparent in mid-range cases up until the sentencing stage. However, disparities occurring earlier in the process are not rectified during sentencing. In fact, in the least aggravated cases, racial disparities are magnified at the sentencing stage.     

Evoked potentials and stages of information processing: Methods of analysis

The use of principal components analysis (PCA) for the study of evoked-response data may be complicated by variations from one trial to another in the latency of underlying brain events. Such variation can come from either random intra-and intersubject variability or from the effects of independent variables that are manipulated between conditions. The effect of such variability is investigated by simulation of these latency-varying events and by analysis of evoked responses in a behavioral task, the Sternberg memory search task, which is well known to generate variation in the latency of brain events. The results of PCA of within-subjects differences in these two situations are plausibly related to underlying stages of information processing, and the technique may augment reaction time data by providing information on the time of occurrence as well as the duration of stages of information processing.     

The effects of muscle tension on cerebral circulation in blood-phobic and non-phobic subjects

This study aimed to assess whether (1) a muscle tensing procedure which has been found to be useful in the treatment of blood-phobic patients produces an increase in heart rate and cerebral blood flow and (2) whether this increase is greater than that produced by mental effort alone. Subjects were 17 volunteers with a history of fainting in response to blood-injury stimuli, (12 were phobic) and 8 volunteers with no fainting history. They were required to (a) rest, (b) do mental arithmetic, and (c) repeatedly tense and release their arm and leg muscles. It was found that Ss, heart rate and cerebral blood flow velocity were significantly greater during the muscle tensing procedure than during mental arithmetic or resting conditions. The increased cerebral blood flow produced by muscle tensing may enable blood phobic patients to prevent fainting during exposure treatment.