Reasons, Rationalities, and Procreative Beneficence: Need Häyry Stand Politely By While Savulescu and Herissone-Kelly Disagree?

The claim that the answers we give to many of the central questions in genethics will depend crucially upon the particular rationality we adopt in addressing them is central to Matti Häyry’s thorough and admirably fair-minded book, Rationality and the Genetic Challenge. That claim implies, of course, that there exists a plurality of rationalities, or discrete styles of reasoning, that can be deployed when considering concrete moral problems. This, indeed, is Häyry’s position. Although he believes that there are certain features definitive of any type of thinking that can accurately be labeled rational, he maintains that nothing about that set of features compels us to conclude that there is a single rationality. What is more, and significantly for the way in which Häyry’s book develops, there is no Archimedean point from which we are licensed to pronounce one flavor of rational deliberation to be intrinsically superior to any other or to be justified to the exclusion of all others. To this belief that “there are many divergent rationalities, all of which can be simultaneously valid,” we can perhaps give the name “the Doctrine of the Plurality of Rationalities” or, for short, “DPR.

Normative Judgment and Rational Requirements: A Reply to Ridge

I examine and rebut Ridge’s two arguments for Capacity Judgment Internalism (simply qua their particular character and content, first person normative judgments are necessarily capable of motivating without the help of any independent desire). First, the rejection of the possibility of anormativism (sec. 2), second, an argument from the rational requirement to intend to do as one judges that one ought to do (sec. 3). I conclude with a few remarks about the nature of this requirement and about verdicts of akrasia. (sec. 4)

Towards a physio-cognitive model of slow-breathing

How may controlled breathing be beneficial, or detrimental to behavior? Computational process models are useful to specify the potential mechanisms that lead to behavioral adaptation during different breathing exercises. We present a physio-cognitive model of slow breathing implemented within a hybrid cognitive architecture, ACT-R/Φ. Comparisons to data from an experiment indicate that the physiological mechanisms are operating in a manner that is consistent with actual human function. The presented computational model provides predictions of ways that controlled breathing interacts with mechanisms of arousal to mediate cognitive behavior. The increasing use of breathing techniques to counteract effects of stressors makes it more important to have a detailed mechanistic account of how these techniques may affect behavior, both in ways that are beneficial and detrimental. This multi-level understanding is useful for adapting to changes in our physical and social environment, not only for performance, but for physical and mental health

Berkeley\u27s active self

The Author considers the strengths and weaknesses of Berkeley’s account of what he calls indifferently the soul, mind, spirit or self. Such an account deserves far more credit than he has standardly been awarded for a significantly modern position, most of which has mistakenly been credited to Schopenhauer. The Aauthor relates Berkeley’s views to those recently expressed by Bill Brewer and attempts to isolate the crucial difference between Berkeley and Schopenhauer

Defining The incidence of Cardiac Involvement in Myositis Using Mapping Based Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Myositis is the name of a group of rare conditions characterised by inflammation and fibrosis of skeletal muscle leading to pain and progressive weakness [1]. In a proportion of patients, extra skeletal muscle manifestations complicate the clinical course. In particular, cardiac muscle involvement is associated with worse outcomes [2, 3]. The pathophysiology of myocardial involvement is inflammation and fibrosis [4] which has proven difficult to identify by traditional investigations. The new techniques of T1 and T2 mapping in cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) allow for assessment of myocardial fibrosis and oedema. Use of T1 and T2 mapping has been shown to offer improved sensitivity for mild and diffuse inflammation as well as subtle focal and diffuse fibrosis in inflammatory myocardial diseases such as viral myocarditis and sarcoidosis. This could help guide therapy and monitor treatment response [5, 6] in myositis.We scanned healthy volunteers to establish normal T1 and T2 values for our particular scanner. Using both healthy volunteers and patients with myositis we devised and validated a novel method of analysing the ventricle following a multi-segment model. The model was based on the 12 basal and mid-level American Heart Association myocardial segments [7]. The apical segments were excluded due to well documented issues around reproducibility [8, 9].Using the above method, we found that patients with myositis had significantly higher T1 and T2 than healthy volunteers, independent of blood troponin. We also found that in patients with myositis, a raised troponin was associated with higher myocardial T1 and T2 values than those patients whose troponin was not elevated.We performed follow -up scans on patients with myositis and demonstrated a reduction in T1 and T2 values over time without any change in overall cardiac function. T2 values returned to baseline over the course of the study whereas T1 values remained significantly higher than that of healthy volunteers.These studies show that measuring myocardial T1 and T2 values in myositis may have a role in both the identification of inflammation or fibrosis and in monitoring the response to treatment. The sample size of the study did not allow for comparison of different treatments to be made.We also undertook mapping of skeletal muscle tissue mapping using the same, gated, cardiac specific un-optimised sequences. The purpose was to look for trends in T1 and T2 values that might suggest a benefit in developing specific sequences to allow researchers or clinicians to reproducibly measure skeletal muscle disease activity non-invasively. We found that, despite large variability in the data set, T2 values decrease over time with treatment suggesting there may indeed be a benefit in working towards dedicated skeletal muscle sequences in the future.<br/

To Err is Human Rights: Toward a Pragmatist Activism (abstract)

Human rights activists have often been criticized by political scientists for being “principled” rather than “pragmatic” actors. Rarely, though, is this criticism accompanied by a discussion of what pragmatism means, or what pragmatic action looks like. In this article, I conceptually trace and define three aspects of pragmatism: philosophical, methodological, and political. I then consider how these aspects of pragmatist thought can be applied in the world of human rights activism. Among other things, I argue that pragmatic activism should remain flexible about the foundations of human rights ideals, that it should accept and even encourage local bad-mouthing of global organizations, that it should embrace imperfect vernacularization of rights laws, that it should endorse activism through trial and error, and that it should move away from linking impact evaluation to funding. The paper then argues through examples that many human rights activists are already pragmatic political actors. The conclusion of this analysis is that the “pragmatist” critique deployed against human rights activists is at minimum underdeveloped, and at maximum coded discourse harboring conservative, anti-rights positions

Berkeley\u27s active self

The Author considers the strengths and weaknesses of Berkeley’s account of what he calls indifferently the soul, mind, spirit or self. Such an account deserves far more credit than he has standardly been awarded for a significantly modern position, most of which has mistakenly been credited to Schopenhauer. The Aauthor relates Berkeley’s views to those recently expressed by Bill Brewer and attempts to isolate the crucial difference between Berkeley and Schopenhauer