What trial participants need to be told about placebo effects to give informed consent: a survey to establish existing knowledge among patients with back pain.John Hughes,Maddy Greville-Harris,Cynthia A. Graham,George Lewith,Peter White &Felicity L. Bishop -2017 -Journal of Medical Ethics 43 (12):867-870.detailsIntroduction Patients require an accurate knowledge about placebos and their possible effects to ensure consent for placebo-controlled clinical trials is adequately informed. However, few previous studies have explored patients’ baseline levels of understanding and knowledge about placebos. The present online survey aimed to assess knowledge about placebos among patients with a history of back pain. Design A 15-item questionnaire was constructed to measure knowledge about placebos. Additional questions assessed sociodemographic characteristics, duration and severity of back pain, and previous experience of (...) receiving placebos. Setting Participants recruited from community settings completed the study online. Results 210 participants completed the questionnaire. 86.7% had back pain in the past 6 months, 44.3% currently had back pain. 4.3% had received a placebo intervention as part of a clinical trial and 68.1% had previously read or heard information about placebos. Overall knowledge of placebos was high, with participants on average answering 12.07 of 15 questions about placebos correctly. However, few participants correctly answered questions about the nocebo effect and the impact of the colour of a placebo pill. Conclusions The findings identified key gaps in knowledge about placebos. The lack of understanding of the nocebo effect in particular has implications for the informed consent of trial participants. Research ethics committees and investigators should prioritise amending informed consent procedures to incorporate the fact that participants in the placebo arm might experience adverse side effects. (shrink)
Educating for ethical survival.Michael Schwartz,HowardHarris,Charmayne Highfield &Hugh Breakey (eds.) -2020 - Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing.detailsIn this volume experienced educators discuss the task of teaching ethics to professionals, managers and others who are practically-minded; and expert contributors explore the nature of ethical survival in contemporary society and the range of organizations it encompasses.
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Race and Racism: No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed.Ken Knisely,LeonardHarris,Naomi Zack &Hugh Taft-Morales -forthcoming -DVD.detailsIs racism an act of the will? A disease? A bad habit? A result of lost virtues or of historical economic forces? Can we reliably claim that racism is an affront to justice? How does our scientific understanding of "race" affect our ethical considerations ? How can we ever know if we are acting from racist assumptions? With LeonardHarris, Naomi Zack, andHugh Taft-Morales.
Collective obituary for James D. Marshall (1937–2021).Michael Peters,Colin Lankshear,Lynda Stone,Paul Smeyers,Linda Tuhiwai Smith,Roger Dale,Graham Hingangaroa Smith,Nesta Devine,Robert Shaw,Bruce Haynes,Denis Philips,KevinHarris,Marc Depaepe,David Aspin,Richard Smith,Hugh Lauder,Mark Olssen,Nicholas C. Burbules,Peter Roberts,Susan L. Robertson,Ruth Irwin,Susanne Brighouse &Tina Besley -2021 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 54 (4):331-349.detailsMichael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...
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Ageing, Autonomy and Resources. Edited by A Harry Lesser. [REVIEW]Julian C. Hughes -2001 -Journal of Medical Ethics 27 (1):69-1.detailsWe should be passionate about the elderly. This book contains, albeit with the occasional lull, some passion, adroit philosophical argument and fascinating social and political insights. It originates from a conference in 1992 and, despite talk of Mrs Thatcher, the book has aged well. The first half deals with autonomy in the elderly; whilst the second considers the allocation of scarce resources. The shift from ethics, via clinical practice, to economics and politics is effected with little effort, precisely because of (...) the book's passion. For it deals with real problems that affect individuals and nations. I wonder if autonomy was a Thatcherite notion?! We loved it in the individualistic 1980s, but its appeal has lessened. It does not solve all our problems and is, perhaps, a hindrance to some elderly people. Dunn links it to being human and to human …. (shrink)
How not to criticize the precautionary principle.Jonathan Hughes -2006 -Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 31 (5):447 – 464.detailsThe precautionary principle has its origins in debates about environmental policy, but is increasingly invoked in bioethical contexts. JohnHarris and Søren Holm argue that the principle should be rejected as incoherent, irrational, and representing a fundamental threat to scientific advance and technological progress. This article argues that while there are problems with standard formulations of the principle,Harris and Holm's rejection of all its forms is mistaken. In particular, they focus on strong versions of the principle and (...) fail to recognize that weaker forms, which may escape their criticisms, are both possible and advocated in the literature. (shrink)
Race and Racism: Dvd.Ken Knisely,Naomi Zack &Hugh Taft-Morales -2002 - Milk Bottle Productions.detailsIs racism an act of the will? A disease? A bad habit? A result of lost virtues or of historical economic forces? Can we reliably claim that racism is an affront to justice? How does our scientific understanding of "race" affect our ethical considerations? How can we ever know if we are acting from racist assumptions? With LeonardHarris, Naomi Zack, andHugh Taft-Morales.
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The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will and Freedom.Hugh McCann -1998 - Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.detailsIn these essays,Hugh J. McCann develops a unified perspective on human action. Written over a period of twenty-five years, the essays provide a comprehensive survey of the major topics in contemporary action theory. In four sections, the book addresses the ontology of action ; the foundations of action ; intention, will, and freedom; and practical rationality. McCann works out a compromise between competing perspectives on the individuation of action ; explores the foundations of action and defends a volitional (...) theory; argues for a libertarian view of both the formation and the execution of intention; and considers the question of consistency in rational intentions, as well as the relationship between practical and theoretical reasoning. -/- Among the original features of McCann's work are his defense of both fine- and coarse-grained actions and his arguments for a noncausal theory of the relation between intention and action. He also suggests that intentions need not be consistent, either with each other or with beliefs about success. And he contends that intention formation is an intrinsically ratiocinative procedure, distinct from reasoning about what action would be best. (shrink)
Vexing expectations.Harris Nover &Alan Hájek -2004 -Mind 113 (450):237-249.detailsWe introduce a St. Petersburg-like game, which we call the ‘Pasadena game’, in which we toss a coin until it lands heads for the first time. Your pay-offs grow without bound, and alternate in sign (rewards alternate with penalties). The expectation of the game is a conditionally convergent series. As such, its terms can be rearranged to yield any sum whatsoever, including positive infinity and negative infinity. Thus, we can apparently make the game seem as desirable or undesirable as we (...) want, simply by reordering the pay-off table, yet the game remains unchanged throughout. Formally speaking, the expectation does not exist; but we contend that this presents a serious problem for decision theory, since it goes silent when we want it to speak. We argue that the Pasadena game is more paradoxical than the St. Petersburg game in several respects. We give a brief review of the relevant mathematics of infinite series. We then consider and rebut a number of replies to our paradox: that there is a privileged ordering to the expectation series; that decision theory should be restricted to finite state spaces; and that it should be restricted to bounded utility functions. We conclude that the paradox remains live. (shrink)
George Berkeley’s proof for the existence of God.Hugh Hunter -2015 -International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 78 (2):183-193.detailsMost philosophers have given up George Berkeley’s proof for the existence of God as a lost cause, for in it, Berkeley seems to conclude more than he actually shows. I defend the proof by showing that its conclusion is not the thesis that an infinite and perfect God exists, but rather the much weaker thesis that a very powerful God exists and that this God’s agency is pervasive in nature. This interpretation, I argue, is consistent with the texts. It is (...) also an important component of Berkeley’s philosophical project, which consists of launching many small arguments against his philosophical and theological opponents. (shrink)
Sexual Selection, Aesthetic Choice, and Agency.Hugh Desmond -forthcoming - In Elisabeth Gayon, Philippe Huneman, Victor Petit & Michel Veuille,150 Years of the Descent of Man. New York: Routledge.detailsDarwin hypothesized that some animals, when selecting sexual partners, possess a genuine “sense of beauty” that cannot be accounted for by the logic of natural selection. This hypothesis has been notoriously controversial. In this chapter I propose that the concept of agency can be useful to operationalize the “sense of beauty”, and can help identify the conditions under which one can infer that animals are acting as (aesthetic) agents. Focusing on a case study of the behavior of the Pavo cristatus, (...) I identify the types of evidence that would allow for the inference of agency through aesthetic choice. (shrink)
(1 other version)Journalists: a moral law unto themselves?Nigel G. E.Harris -1990 -Journal of Applied Philosophy 7 (1):75-85.detailsABSTRACT Journalists often take themselves as having a moral duty to protect their sources. If the sources in question leak information from government departments, government ministers will consider themselves as having the moral right to demand that the journalists disclose the identity of those sources. This creates conflicts of value between what journalists and ministers consider to be right. It is argued not only that traditional moral theories cannot resolve such moral conflicts, but that they are in a sense a (...) good thing. A world in which the conflicts occur may be considered to be better than one in which they are prevented from occurring, for one can expect to have both effective journalism and effective government only in the former. The most important consequence of this view is that it makes the professional ethics of journalism into something more than the mere application of universal moral rules to the various situations in which those who work in the profession are liable to find themselves. (shrink)
Realism and Resurrection in advance.Hugh Williams -forthcoming -International Philosophical Quarterly.detailsCharles Taylor is one of the most important philosophers writing today. He has both chronicled and to some extent explained the profound cultural revolution of the West that is called secularism along with its close associate called pluralism. Nevertheless, he has struggled throughout his vast corpus to examine and reevaluate the deeper epistemological and ontological structures that underly this pervasive cultural revolution. His recent text with Hubert Dreyfus Retrieving Realism is perhaps his most concentrated effort to pursue this more technical (...) philosophical issue. This paper argues that there are key aspects of this effort that can be transposed to a consideration of the central Christian notion and doctrine concerning”death and bodily resurrection,” giving this question and issue a renewed philosophical valence. (shrink)
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Oh my neighbors, there is no neighbor.Harris B. Bechtol -2019 -International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 80 (4-5):326-343.detailsABSTRACTThis article meditates on the Christian command to love the neighbor as yourself by focusing on how both Jacques Derrida and Søren Kierkegaard have read this command. I argue that Derrida, failing in his faithfulness to Kierkegaard, makes a mistake when he includes this command in the Greek model of the politics of friendship in his Politics of Friendship. Such a mistake is illumined by Kierkegaard’s understanding of the neighbor in this command from Works of Love because this understanding helps (...) to develop Derrida’s vision of a democracy and politics that resists the hegemony of the masculine and remains open to the event of a non-hierarchical relation to the other. (shrink)
Dialectic and the Advance of Science.Errol E.Harris -1994 -Idealistic Studies 24 (3):227-239.detailsIn his review of Phillip Grier’s anthology, Dialectic and Contemporary Science, Darrel Christensen expresses his regret that I “did not find occasion… to give more attention… to the sorts of well-informed and pointed criticism that E. McMullin raised.. in ‘Is the Progress of Science Dialectical?’” In that book it would hardly have been possible or appropriate, for me to have done so, because I did not write it, and although the editor invited me to respond to the authors who contributed, (...) Ernan McMullin was not one of them. The paper to which Christensen refers was presented to the first meeting of the Hegel Society of America in 1970, at which I was present; but after so long an interval of time I cannot now remember if or how, I responded to it. So far as my recollection serves, my own paper, although distributed to those attending the meeting, was not read and was not fully discussed. So there may well be some need for taking up Christensen’s challenge, even at this late hour. (shrink)