Blog
December 21, 2012
Can the Discovery of Consciousness Provide More Reason to Let a Patient Die? A Response to Savulescu (by Adam Shriver)
Recently, the Vancouver Sun reported on an ongoing legal case that potentially has important implications for neuroethics and the law. Kenny Ng, the patient at the center of the controversy, was injured in a car accident seven years ago and … Continue reading
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December 19, 2012
Propranolol as therapy for combat related PTSD? (Andrew Peterson)
S. Matthew Liao, director of the bioethics program at NYU, recently drew attention to important issues related to the use of propranolol to treat combat related post-traumatic stress disorder. In an interview published in the New York Times, Liao stated … Continue reading
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December 2, 2012
What Neuroscience has to tell us before it can tell us about morality.
By: Patrick Clipsham On November 19th 2012, Professor Patricia Churchland (UC San Diego) gave the first lecture in the Neurophilosophy Speaker Series, which is jointly sponsored by Western’s Rotman Institute of Philosophy and Brain and Mind Institute. Churchland is, without … Continue reading
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November 20, 2012
Ethical Implications of Detecting Awareness in Disorders of Consciousness (By Mackenzie Graham and Andrew Peterson)
A recent BBC documentary profiles the extraordinary work of Western’s Dr. Adrian M. Owen on detecting unrecognized awareness in individuals diagnosed as being in a vegetative state (VS). Owen and his research team have developed a way for patients who … Continue reading
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November 6, 2012
Fraud in science, and the more widespread impact of the incentives that beget it (Nicholas McGinnis)
The Guardian recently ran an article about fraud in the sciences, noting the institutional pressures placed on researchers that play a part in motivating misconduct: “A recent paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that … Continue reading
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November 5, 2012
An Interview with Dr. Lainie Ross (By Nanette Ryan)
An Interview with Dr. Lainie Ross Dr. Lainie Ross is the Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum Professor of Clinical Ethics; Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, Surgery and The College; and Associate Director of the Maclean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, at the … Continue reading
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October 29, 2012
Does Science Need Math? – Pub night at The Morrissey House (By Reuven Brandt)
On Wednesday October 17th the Rotman Institute sponsored a pub night at The Morrissey House where we discussed the history of quantification in science. The purpose was to discuss some of the ideas raised at The Language of Nature Workshop … Continue reading
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October 24, 2012
'Sugar is Toxic' – how's that for a press release title?
Image by Mark Smith from Nature, Feb 1st, 2012. In some alternative health publications, the suggestion that sugar is a toxic substance would not be a news story, but when you start suggesting in Nature that sugar should be taxed … Continue reading
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October 15, 2012
Quantum and Geometric Possibility
(Image: Quantum Cloud, sculpture by Antony Gormley) Last year two books appeared that will be on the required reading list for philosophers of physics for many years to come: Gordon Belot‘s Geometric Possibility and Laura Ruetsche‘s Interpreting Quantum Theories. The … Continue reading
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October 14, 2012
Commentary on George Reisch's "The Paranoid Style in American History of Science" – By Reuven Brandt
The last talk in the Rotman lecture series, given by George Reisch of Northwestern University, focused on how the political and social climate of the late 1950s influenced Kuhn’s famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Reisch claims that Kuhn’s … Continue reading
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