人文科学最新文献

Traditionally, rock engravings were studied through their visual characteristics. They have been analyzed with comparative and interpretative methodologies of iconography and iconology. However, there has been a recent shift towards identifying production processes, allowing reconstruction of operational characteristics through various methods. Nevertheless, the studies of the technological aspects typically focus on the operational and the mechanical, often omitting the visuality of the outcome. In the current paper, we are using ArchCUT3-D software for computational analysis of 3-D data acquired from various rock engravings located in Timna Park, southern Israel. We show how micro-morphological evidence, extracted from the engraved lines, can decode technical trends and variabilities in a technique’s particular implementation. Then, we conduct a focused examination of one group of engraved figures in order to establish a link between execution techniques and visual considerations. Based on our results and the following discussion, we suggest the term Techné to indicate the choice of technique that goes beyond the instrumental or purely operative perspectives. We highlight the intentional choice, which designs the visual rhetoric of the engraved marks and suggests cultural concepts that contrived the procedural processes.

Disability studies have been successfully focusing on individuals' lived experiences, the personalization of goals, and the constitution of the individual in defining disease and restructuring public understandings of disability. Although they had a strong influence in the policy making and medical modeling of disease, their framework has not been translated to traditional naturalistic accounts of disease. I will argue that, using new developments in evolutionary biology (Extended Evolutionary Synthesis [EES] about questions of proper function) and behavioral ecology (Niche conformance and construction about the questions of reference classes in biostatistics accounts), the main elements of the framework of disability studies can be used to represent life histories at the conceptual level of the two main "non-normative" accounts of disease. I chose these accounts since they are related to medicine in a more descriptive way. The success of the practical aspects of disability studies this way will be communicated without causing injustice to the individual since they will represent the individuality of the patient in two main naturalistic accounts of disease: the biostatistical account and the evolutionary functional account. Although most accounts criticizing the concept of disease as value-laden do not supply a positive element, disability studies can supply a good point for descriptive extension of the concept through inclusion of epistemic agency.

We inquire into the role of Turing's biological thought in the development of his concept of intelligent machinery. We trace the possible relations between his proto-connectionist notion of 'organising' machines in Turing (1948) on the one hand and his mathematical theory of morphogenesis in developmental biology (1952) on the other. These works were concerned with distinct fields of inquiry and followed distinct paradigms of biological theory, respectively postulating analogues of Darwinian selection in learning and mathematical laws of form in organic pattern formation. Still, these strands of Turing's work are related, first, in terms of being amenable in principle to his (1936) computational method of modelling. Second, they are connected by Turing's scattered speculations about the possible bearing of learning processes on the anatomy of the brain. We argue that these two theories form an unequal couple that, from different angles and in partial fashion, point towards cognition as a biological and embodied phenomenon while, for reasons inherent to Turing's computational approach to modelling, not being capable of directly addressing it as such. We explore ways in which these two distinct-but-related theories could be more explicitly and systematically connected, using von Neumann's contemporaneous and related work on Cellular Automata and more recent biomimetic approaches as a foil. We conclude that the nature of 'initiative' and the mode of material realisation are the key issues that decide on the possibility of intelligent machinery in Turing.

Double object constructions provide an ideal context in which to investigate interactions between multiple instances of movement. With two internal arguments, we can construct scenarios where one A-moves and another Ā-moves, such as in the passive wh-question What was Sue given? Holmberg et al. (2019) observe that in many languages (e.g. Norwegian) that otherwise permit either object of a double object construction to A-move to subject position, a restriction emerges when the indirect object wh-moves: the indirect object must also A-move (e.g. Who was given a book?). One cannot pronounce an indirect object wh-question in a clause where the direct object A-moves instead (*Who was a book given?). In this paper, I observe that this restriction is only found in languages that otherwise permit the indirect object to A-move. In languages such as Greek, which have no indirect object passives, indirect objects can freely wh-move in a direct object passive, and thus do not exhibit the same restriction as in Norwegian. I propose that this restriction comes about in languages such as Norwegian but not Greek due to the timing of wh-movement relative to A-movement within vP. Indirect objects wh-move through the position that controls A-movement early, blocking a direct object from A-moving, so long as the indirect object can A-move itself. The analysis features a smuggling approach to passives of ditransitives (Collins 2005) and an economy condition like van Urk and Richards’ (2015) Multitasking, which jointly predict the order of operations that gives rise to the wh-movement restriction observed in Norwegian.

Patients need to be given the relevant information to be able to give informed consent, which might require the disclosure of a provisional diagnosis. Yet, there is no duty to give information to a patient if that patient is aware that this information exists but chooses not to request it. Diagnostic radiographers and healthcare scientists are often responsible for ensuring that patients have given informed consent for the investigations they undertake, but which were requested by other clinicians. Here we examine if they have a duty to disclose a patient's provisional diagnosis made by a referring clinician if the patient asks for this information as part of the informed consent process to a diagnostic investigation. We first consider aspects of UK law, professional guidance and salient ethical principles, emphasising that while professional codes of practice highlight the need to act in the patient's best interest, they do not require giving patients information they do not require for the examination or have not requested. We then propose that diagnostic radiographers and healthcare scientists placed in such a position use a 'minimally necessary disclosure' framework. This framework fulfils their commitment to their patient and the principle of veracity, while respecting the boundaries of their professional duties. The framework ensures that enough detail is given to the patient for them to be able to give informed consent, while shouldering the diagnostic professional from making a full disclosure, which is the duty of the referring clinician.

• Editor's Note
• Quill R. Kukla

This issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal offers three articles that encourage readers to think in different ways about how we use and share medical facts and information. Communication and information-sharing in medicine are never value-neutral processes, and there is never an objective answer to what information should be shared or how. What information we have access to, what information we take as relevant, and how we share that information are always vexed issues. This is because medical information is inherently socially charged, value-laden, and uncertain, and sharing it is bound up with norms of privacy, principles of relevance and empirical reasoning, and the complexities of health communication. All three essays in this issue, in taking up these issues, work at the intersection of ethics and social epistemology.

In "The Goals of Medicine: Debate and Disagreements Around Contraceptive Side Effects," Ilvie Prince argues that our framing of the benefits, risks, and side effects of hormonal contraception is shaped by a specific understanding of the purpose and nature of medicine. This framing, she argues, ends up harming people who can become pregnant. While it is common to point out that contraceptive and reproductive health care are distorted by sexism, Prince argues that there are yet deeper distortions at work in our understanding of contraceptive side effects. When the primary goal of medicine is understood as the prevention of disease and dysfunction, narrowly construed, this obscures our ability to properly weigh and articulate the harms of both pregnancy and contraception. Since women are disproportionately the ones who bear the burdens and risks of both reproduction and contraception, this obfuscation has sexist results, as it disproportionately harms women. Prince also argues that once we understand the goals of medicine more broadly, we cannot avoid the uncomfortable fact that doctors must address social harms and benefits—and not just narrowly biological ones—despite the risk that this kind of intervention can serve politically nefarious ends. Prince's rich piece draws on her deep understanding of bioethics, as well as the history and science of reproductive medicine. [End Page vii]

Benjamin Chin-Yee's tightly argued paper—"Generalizations in Clinical Trials: Do Generics Help or Harm?"—digs into the details of the language of health communication and its epistemic and ethical perils. He points out that generalizations in biomedical science (statements about what is generally true) often take the form of generics. Generics are general statements that contain implicit generalizations, but don't actually use quantificational language, such as "Drug A cures condition C" or "Peop