Rationality and moral autonomy: An essay in moral psychology

Although there are many variations on the theme, so much is made of the good of moral autonomy that it is difficult not to suppose that there is everything to be said for being morally autonomous and nothing at all to be said for being morally nonautonomous. However, this view of moral autonomy cannot be made to square with the well-received fact that most people are morally nonautonomous — not, at any rate, unless one is prepared to maintain that most people are irrational in this respect. I am not. Thus, I reject what I take to be the prevailing view of moral autonomy. I argue that it is false that (1) moral autonomy is such that it is rational for every person to prefer being morally autonomous to being morally nonautonomous, but true that (2) moral autonomy is such that if anyone is morally autonomous, then it is rational for him to prefer being morally autonomous to being morally nonautonomous.     

On differentiating syntactic and semantic features in emerging grammars: Evidence from empty form usage

Recent emphasis on underlying semantic relations in the child's acquisition of grammar has left ignored those cases where syntactic operations can be observed relatively independent of semantic relations. Such operations may reveal optional processes in the child's transition from single-word utterances to grammatical usage that may be related to specific linguistic rather than general cognitive abilities.     

Sex typing and the coronary-prone behavior pattern

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between sex-role orientation and the coronary-prone behavior pattern [Type A]. Ninety-six males and eighty-four females were administered the Bem Sex Role Inventory and the student version of the Jenkins Activity Survey. The results showed that, irrespective of sex, Type A subjects were significantly more instrumental (masculine) and less expressive (feminine) than Type B subjects. Consistent with previous research females were found to be more expressive than males; however, the sole predictor of instrumentality was A/B classification. The potential significance of these findings for refining predictions of coronary artery and heart disease is discussed and recommendations for future research are offered.Portions of this paper were presented at the Third Annual Meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, Chicago, March 1982.     

Andisp: A Turbo pascal program to analyze and display sampled data

ANDISP is a Turbo Pascal program that analyzes, displays, and manipulates sampled data recorded with a PC-compatible data-acquisition system The data analysis routines include “integrate/differentiate a channel”, “rectify,” “smooth,” “filter,” and “add/sub/mult/div a channel by a constant, ” as well as a routine that gives some basic statistics. The data manipulation routines are “copy a channel” or “copy the data buffer to a file.” The versatile display routine can give either oscilloscope-type displays of a data channel or plots of pubUshable quality. Hardware requirements are an IBM-compatible microcomputer and an EGA color monitor.     

De l’opportunité d’une nouvelle loi sur la fin de vie ?

This paper deals with the end of life issue. It advocates for putting the legislation about end of life a part from bioethics laws and addresses some legal problems.     

An ethically justified framework for clinical investigation to benefit pregnant and fetal patients

Research to improve the health of pregnant and fetal patients presents ethical challenges to clinical investigators, institutional review boards, funding agencies, and data safety and monitoring boards. The Common Rule sets out requirements that such research must satisfy but no ethical framework to guide their application. We provide such an ethical framework, based on the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient. We offer criteria for innovation and for Phase I and II and then for Phase III clinical trials to improve the health of pregnant patients and of fetal patients and also criteria to responsibly manage the transition from investigation to clinical practice. Basing ethical criteria for research involving pregnant women on the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient insulates the proposed ethical framework and therefore research on pregnant women from the divisive and politicized concepts and discourses of personhood, fetal rights, and unborn child.