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International research, sponsored by for-profit companies, is regularly criticised as unethical on the grounds that it exploits research subjects in developing countries. Many commentators agree that exploitation occurs when the benefits of cooperative activity are unfairly distributed between the parties. To determine whether international research is exploitative we therefore need an account of fair distribution. Procedural accounts of fair bargaining have been popular solutions to this problem, but I argue that they are insufficient to protect against exploitation. I argue instead (...) that a maximin principle of fair distribution provides a more compelling normative account of fairness in relationships characterised by extreme vulnerability and inequality of bargaining potential between the parties. A global tax on international research would provide a mechanism for implementing the maximin account of fair benefits. This model has the capacity to ensure fair benefits and thereby prevent exploitation in international research. (shrink)

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Focusing on the topics of empiricism, naturalism, imagination, and social relations, the paper examines the ways in which Quine and Anderson’s projects in naturalized epistemology may be understood as successors to Hume’s epistemological framework. The paper concludes with some remarks on the normative side of naturalized epistemology to show that situating these thinkers together may illuminate one of the more controversial aspects of Hume’s philosophy to do with naturalism and skepticism.

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A common argument against explanatory reductionism is that higher‐level explanations are sometimes or always preferable because they are more general than reductive explanations. Here I challenge two basic assumptions that are needed for that argument to succeed. It cannot be assumed that higher‐level explanations are more general than their lower‐level alternatives or that higher‐level explanations are general in the right way to be explanatory. I suggest a novel form of pluralism regarding levels of explanation, according to which explanations at different (...) levels are preferable in different circumstances because they offer different types of generality, which are appropriate in different circumstances of explanation. (shrink)

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This paper contends that a research ethics approach to the regulation of health data research is unhelpful in the era of population‐level research and big data because it results in a primary focus on consent (meta‐, broad, dynamic and/or specific consent). Two recent guidelines – the 2016 WMA Declaration of Taipei on ethical considerations regarding health databases and biobanks and the revised CIOMS International ethical guidelines for health‐related research involving humans – both focus on the growing reliance on health data (...) for research. But as research ethics documents, they remain (to varying degrees) focused on consent and individual control of data use. Many current and future uses of health data make individual consent impractical, if not impossible. Many of the risks of secondary data use apply to communities and stakeholders rather than individual data subjects. Shifting from a research ethics perspective to a public health lens brings a different set of issues into view: how are the benefits and burdens of data use distributed, how can data research empower communities, who has legitimate decision‐making capacity? I propose that a public health ethics framework – based on public benefit, proportionality, equity, trust and accountability – provides more appropriate tools for assessing the ethical uses of health data. The main advantage of a public health approach for data research is that it is more likely to foster debate about power, justice and equity and to highlight the complexity of deciding when data use is in the public interest. (shrink)

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Notions of care for humans and more-than-humans appear at the margins of the sustainability transformations debate. This paper explores the merits of an ethics of care approach to sustainability tr...

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The tremendous philosophical focus on how to characterize explanatory metaphysical dependence has eclipsed a number of other unresolved issued about scientific explanation. The purpose of this paper is taxonomical. I will outline a number of other questions about the nature of explanation and its role in science—eight, to be precise—and argue that each is independent. All of these topics have received some philosophical attention, but none nearly so much as it deserves. Furthermore, existing views on these topics have been obscured (...) by not distinguishing among these independent questions and, especially, by not separating them from the question of what metaphysical dependence relation is explanatory. Philosophical analysis of scientific explanation would be much improved by attending more carefully to these, and probably still other, elements of an account of explanation. (shrink)

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There is increasing attention to the centrality of idealization in science. One common view is that models and other idealized representations are important to science, but that they fall short in one or more ways. On this view, there must be an intermediary step between idealized representation and the traditional aims of science, including truth, explanation, and prediction. Here I develop an alternative interpretation of the relationship between idealized representation and the aims of science. In my view, continuing, widespread idealization (...) calls into question the idea that science aims for truth. I argue that understanding must replace truth as the ultimate epistemic aim of science. Additionally, science has a wide variety aims, epistemic and non-epistemic, and these aims motivate different kinds of scientific products. Finally, I show how these diverse aims---all rather distant from truth---result in the expanded influence of social values on science. (shrink)

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On the basis of an analysis of relevant passages from the political-philosophical works of Spinoza, an interpretation is given of his concept of ‘public peace’. This investigation is undertaken in the context of the recent discussion between liberalists and communitarians on the question whether the basis of moral society has to be found in the autonomy of the individual or in the community which provides us with an identity. The outcome of the analysis is that Spinoza’s concept of peace refers (...) to a situation of harmony between individuals and their community. This harmony can be understood from the standpoint of the philosophy of law, of psychology and of ethics. Interesting is the fact that Spinoza’s political philosophy is a reflection on the actual practice of living together, and is therefore less ‘idealistic’ than the recent positions in the debate about the individual and the community. (shrink)

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Public-private partnerships are established to specifically harness the potential of Big Data in healthcare and can include partners working across the data chain—producing health data, analysing data, using research results or creating value from data. This domain paper will illustrate the challenges that arise when partners from the public and private sector collaborate to share, analyse and use biomedical Big Data. We discuss three specific challenges for PPPs: working within the social licence, public antipathy to the commercialisation of public sector (...) health data, and questions of ownership, both of the data and any resulting intellectual property or products. As a specific example we consider the case of the UK National Health Service providing patient data to Google’s DeepMind AI program to develop a diagnostic app for kidney disease. This article is an application of the framework presented in this issue of ABR. Please refer to that article for more information on how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end. We use four specific values to help analysis these issues: public benefit, stewardship, transparency and engagement. We demonstrate how the Deliberative Framework can support ethical governance of PPPs involving biomedical big data. (shrink)

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Considering the overwhelming amount of media products that we are subjected to in the 21stcentury and the way in which those inevitably influence our perception of reality, this research pays specific attention to the role of the media in the construction and enhancement of stereotypes in everyday life, via the language or, more specifically, specialized languages. In particular, this paper aims to investigate an American legal TV series in order to analyze the way in which legal English is used in (...) dialogues. The major research questions are: to what extent such a kind of specialized discourse may be really understood by the greater audience? How does legal drama participate in the shaping of stereotypes relating to the legal environment in the country where it is produced, and cross-culturally, bearing in mind the prominence of “made in the USA” products in the television programming across the world? Ultimately, in the light of the previous questions, should the growing field of research in audiovisual translation extend its investigation into the area of legal English? Taking into consideration the seminal work of Pedersen and Diaz Cintas in the field of Audiovisual Translation, the study will examine the subtitling techniques employed for this atypical genre. Through the analysis of a corpus comprising several dialogues from a collection of episodes of the legal show Reckless, the paper will mostly focus on gender representations and their most common linguistically enhanced stereotypes. (shrink)

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What is form? Why does form matter? In this imaginative and ambitious study,Angela Leighton assesses not only the legacy of Victorian aestheticism, and its richly resourceful keyword, 'form', but also the very nature of the literary. She shows how writers, for two centuries and more, have returned to the idea of form as something which contains the secret of art itself. She tracks the development of the word from the Romantics to contemporary poets, and offers close readings of, (...) among others, Tennyson, Pater, Woolf, Yeats, Stevens, and Plath, to show how form has provided the single most important way of accounting for the movements of literary language itself. She investigates, for instance, the old debate of form and content, of form as music or sound-shape, as the ghostly dynamic and dynamics of a text, as well as its long association with the aestheticist principle of being 'for nothing'. In a wide-ranging and inventive argument, she suggests that form is the key to the pleasure of the literary text, and that that pleasure is part of what literary criticism itself needs to answer and convey. (shrink)

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The widespread adoption of radioisotopes as tools in biomedical research and therapy became one of the major consequences of the "physicists' war" for postwar life science. Scientists in the Manhattan Project, as part of their efforts to advocate for civilian uses of atomic energy after the war, proposed using infrastructure from the wartime bomb project to develop a government-run radioisotope distribution program. After the Atomic Energy Bill was passed and before the Atomic Energy Commission was formally established, the Manhattan Project (...) began shipping isotopes from Oak Ridge. Scientists and physicians put these reactor-produced isotopes to many of the same uses that had been pioneered with cyclotron-generated radioisotopes in the 1930s and early 1940s. The majority of early AEC shipments were radioiodine and radiophosphorus, employed to evaluate thyroid function, diagnose medical disorders, and irradiate tumors. Both researchers and politicians lauded radioisotopes publicly for their potential in curing diseases, particularly cancer. However, isotopes proved less successful than anticipated in treating cancer and more successful in medical diagnostics. On the research side, reactor-generated radioisotopes equipped biologists with new tools to trace molecular transformations from metabolic pathways to ecosystems. The U.S. government's production and promotion of isotopes stimulated their consumption by scientists and physicians, such that in the postwar period isotopes became routine elements of laboratory and clinical use. In the early postwar years, radioisotopes signified the government's commitment to harness the atom for peace, particularly through contributions to biology, medicine, and agriculture. (shrink)

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Levels of organization and their use in science have received increased philosophical attention of late, including challenges to the well-foundedness or widespread usefulness of levels concepts. One kind of response to these challenges has been to advocate a more precise and specific levels concept that is coherent and useful. Another kind of response has been to argue that the levels concept should be taken as a heuristic, to embrace its ambiguity and the possibility of exceptions as acceptable consequences of its (...) usefulness. In this chapter, I suggest that each of these strategies faces its own attendant downsides, and that pursuit of both strategies (by different thinkers) compounds the difficulties. That both kinds of approaches are advocated is, I think, illustrative of the problems plaguing the concept of levels of organization. I end by suggesting that the invocation of levels may mislead scientific and philosophical investigations more than it informs them, so our use of the levels concept should be updated accordingly. (shrink)

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Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts of AVH (...) at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

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This paper deals with one of Plutarch’s favourite subjects - the relation between human beings and animals. In order to gain new insight into this topic, a three-step approach is chosen: First, the paper investigates some of the essential ideas concerning animals (their soul, their emotions and intellectual capacities) to be found in Plutarch’s work and the vocabulary he employs. Secondly, the paper focuses on Plutarch’s unique style of writing and his skillful use of the Socratic method to guide his (...) audience. Thirdly, Plutarch’s personal opinion will be analyzed. In the first part of this paper, Plutarch’s work serves as a lens to unfold the nature of contemporary discourses on the relation between man and animal (with broad agreement on some points and controversies about others) as well as the different notions associated with the terms theria and zoa. A special focus is placed on the ‘Gryllos’ (mor. 985 d-992 e). Plutarch’s treatise ‘Whether the creatures of the land or the creatures of the sea have more phronesis’ (mor. 959 b-985 c) is an important contribution to the field of animal ethics and the subject of the second part of this paper. The ingenious structure of said text illustrates Plutarch’s qualities as a writer and how carefully he employs maieutic methods to support his readers in developing their own point of view. The third part of this paper is devoted to passages from Plutarch’s oeuvre which illustrate his personal position in the debate on the relation between human beings and animals. He is clearly aware that life on earth is inextricably interwoven with acts of killing and destruction, yet he also believes that observing animals has some lessons to offer to mystery religions. Plutarch describes animals as ‘clearer mirrors to the divine’, thereby illustrating that he perceives creatures - whether tiny or large - as a unique chance to gain a better understanding of the miracle of life. In this capacity animals provide a way for human beings to improve their insight into the nature of the divine. (shrink)

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In this paper, I will argue that efforts to legalize aid-in-dying or physician-assisted suicide are attempts to rebrand this sort of death as a good choice. It is common to justify physician-assisted suicide through arguments for a) relieving suffering or b) allowing individual autonomy, but I will show that the problem with these justifications is that once this type of death is judged as acceptable, it is difficult to justify limiting it to a narrow group such as the mentally competent, (...) communicatively able, terminally ill adults designated by these legalization bills. Ultimately, we must either label many more deaths as good deaths, destigmatizing suicide, or we must reject the notion that death at the time we choose is acceptable. I will argue for the latter. (shrink)

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ABSTRACTThe present study assessed the extent to which culture impacts the emotion-induced memory trade-off effect. This trade-off effect occurs because emotional items are better remembered than neutral ones, but this advantage comes at the expense of memory for backgrounds such that neutral backgrounds are remembered worse when they occurred with an emotional item than with a neutral one. Cultures differ in their prioritisation of focal object versus contextual background information, with Westerners focusing more on objects and Easterners focusing more on (...) backgrounds. Americans, a Western culture, and Turks, an Eastern-influenced culture, incidentally encoded positive, negative, and neutral items placed against neutral backgrounds, and then completed a surprise memory test with the items and backgrounds tested separately. Results revealed a reduced trade-off for Turks compared to Americans. Although both groups exhibited an emotional enhancement in item memory, Turks did not show a decrement in memory... (shrink)

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LYNCHING, A MORAL PROBLEM THAT PROVIDES INSIGHT INTO AMERICA'S past and present, is more than "a rope and a bundle of sticks." Lynching was always intended as a metaphor to understand race relations in the United States. How, then, might we interpret the proliferation of nooses in various American locales in 2006 and 2007? In this essay I examine whether responses to a cultural symbol—the noose—can result in ethical possibilities that contribute to the common good.

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This paper summarises the author 's doctoral research on the development of interpersonal/interorganisational trust in relationships between expatriate and Russian staff working in east‐west enterprises in Russia. There is strong evidence from a variety of researchers to suggest that in order for western businesses investing in Russia to succeed, the dif.cult process of building trust needs to be understood and managed since in the Russian business climate western standards and norms of ethical business have not yet been established. According to (...) research.ndings, western investors doing business in Russia and the long‐term, personal trust that characterises family and friend relationships more congenial and more productive than formal, arm's‐length contacts and contracts. In such a context, it becomes important to identify what creates and destroys trust in the post‐Soviet business environment. This paper describes the causal factors leading to trust or lack of trust in relationships within western‐invested strategic alliances in Russia. The key relationship under consideration is the one between expatriate western staff and managers seconded to the venture on the one hand, and their local Russian staff, counterparts and superiors on the other. (shrink)

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It is a common thought that mathematics can be not only true but also beautiful, and many of the greatest mathematicians have attached central importance to the aesthetic merit of their theorems, proofs and theories. But how, exactly, should we conceive of the character of beauty in mathematics? In this paper I suggest that Kant's philosophy provides the resources for a compelling answer to this question. Focusing on §62 of the ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’, I argue against the common view (...) that Kant's aesthetics leaves no room for beauty in mathematics. More specifically, I show that on the Kantian account beauty in mathematics is a non-conceptual response felt in light of our own creative activities involved in the process of mathematical reasoning. The Kantian proposal I thus develop provides a promising alternative to Platonist accounts of beauty widespread among mathematicians. While on the Platonist conception the experience of mathematical beauty consists in an intellectual insight into the fundamental structures of the universe, according to the Kantian proposal the experience of beauty in mathematics is grounded in our felt awareness of the imaginative processes that lead to mathematical knowledge. The Kantian account I develop thus offers to elucidate the connection between aesthetic reflection, creative imagination and mathematical cognition. (shrink)

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The purpose of this article is to show that animal rights are not necessarily at odds with the use of animals for research. If animals hold basic moral rights similar to those of humans, then we should consequently extend the ethical requirements guiding research with humans to research with animals. The article spells out how this can be done in practice by applying the seven requirements for ethical research with humans proposed by Ezekiel Emanuel, David Wendler and Christine Grady to (...) animal research. These requirements are i) social value, ii) scientific validity, iii) independent review, iv) fair subject selection, v) favorable risk-benefit ratio, vi) informed consent, and vii) respect for research subjects. In practice, this means that we must reform the practice of animal research to make it more similar to research with humans, rather than completely abolish the former. Indeed, if we banned animal research altogether, then we would also deprive animals of its potential benefits – which would be ethically problematic. (shrink)

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Environmental virtues have become an essential ingredient in an ethics of nature. An account of environmental virtues can contribute to this ethics of natre by exploring the virtues that the gardener displays in cultivating and caring for plants. An approach that relates to the virtues of gardening is helpful in explicating a more general approach in a certain domain of interaction with nature. Good gardeners get involved in processes of natural growth and decay, they are aware of their position within (...) the garden, and they endure ambivalences in nature. This relational account of the virtues of gardening is also exemplary in processes of active co-designing of nature and in landscaping. (shrink)

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This paper challenges historians’ portrayal of Elizabethan puritanism as rooted in the Marian exile of 1553-1558, through a fresh examination of three exiles who have been described as early puritans: James Pilkington, John Jewel, and Laurence Humphrey. By studying the value they placed on church unity, this paper brings out the fundamental differences between the early reformers and the later puritans. It also demonstrates that the religious selfidentity of these men pre-dated the accession of Mary. Thus, their exile was a (...) means of strengthening their faith, not finding it, and their return meant that there was more continuity between the Edwardian and Elizabethan churches than is often allowed in current scholarship. (shrink)

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Narrative picturing is a creative interviewing technique that can be applied within qualitative research interviews with the aim of enhancing the ‘richness’ of narrative data. This paper describes briefly narrative picturing and its theoretical underpinnings. Whilst using this technique within a dedicated study of people with experience of self‐cutting, two key factors emerged in relation to advancing the use of narrative picturing. These were overcoming the inhibitions of the person interviewed and the exploration of personal meaning(s) disclosed during narrative picturing, (...) which were commonly found to be particularly abstract or unprocessed. This paper suggests interviewing techniques aimed at overcoming these potential limitations. Once overcome, narrative picturing appeared to support the exploration and narration of more ‘in‐depth’ accounts of lived experience, enhancing understandings of both the person interviewed and the researcher. (shrink)

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Large parts of our world are filled with plants, and human life depends on, interacts with, affects and is affected by plant life in various ways. Yet plants have not received nearly as much attention from philosophers and ethicists as they deserve. In environmental philosophy, plants are often swiftly subsumed under the categories of "all living things" and rarely considered thematically. There is a need for developing a more sophisticated theoretical understanding of plants and their practical role in human experience. (...) Plant Ethics: Concepts and Applications aims at opening a philosophical discussion that may begin to fill that gap. The book investigates issues in plants ontology, ethics and the role of plants and their cultivation in various fields of application. It explores and develops important concepts to shape and frame plants-related philosophical questions accurately, including new ideas of how to address moral questions when confronted with plants in concrete scenarios. This edited volume brings together for the first time, and in an interdisciplinary spirit, contemporary approaches to plant ethics by international scholars of established reputation. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Philosophy and Ethics. (shrink)

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Sarat Colling's Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era confronts an issue vastly disregarded by activists and animal advocates, an issue that ultimately leads to the constant reaffirmation of logocentrism and human exceptionalism. Assuming that other-than-human animals do not have their own voices and a main role in their struggles for liberation constitutes what Colling names "savior narratives," a very common discourse even among those who care for the more-than-human world. In fact, other-than-human animals are seen, not rarely, as beings (...) without a language of their own, which places them in a misleading position of dependency in relation to humans. Against this background, Colling's book lucidly... (shrink)

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This article argues that the Third Way’, as the ideological rationale for the New Labour Government in the UK, attempts to resolve the tensions around women and social policy confronted by the present Government. The Third Way addresses ‘women’ without ‘feminism’, in particular those floating women voters for whom feminism holds little attraction. But affluent, middle England, corporate women, though central to the popular imagination of the Daily Mail, and thus to Tony Blair, are in practice a tiny minority. New (...) Labour in office thus finds itself committed to reconciling the irreconcilable. It wants to see women as a social group move more fully into employment, and on this many feminists would agree. At the same time it wants to see through further transformations of the welfare state, along the lines set in motion by Mrs Thatcher. Inevitably this involves further cuts in spending and privatization of social insurance. The former principle is made more difficult by the latter policy. Recent feminist analysis indicates the scale of the needs of women to allow full and equal participation in work and in society. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mary as the Exemplar of the Body's PovertyAngela FranksRecent MariologyFollowing the trajectory of Mariology and Marian devotion for the last century or so is enough to give one whiplash. On the one hand, the declaration of the doctrine of Mary's Assumption in 1950 by Pope Pius XII represents a strand of Mariology that emphasizes her divinely granted prerogatives and glory. In popular piety, this dogmatic emphasis was mirrored by (...) devotional practices that stressed Mary's mediatorial power.1 On the other hand, many theologians were concerned that such teaching and practice obscured the centrality of Christ, the Church, and the liturgy in Christian life.2 One could see the placing of Mary within chapter 8 of Lumen Gentium less than fifteen years after the declaration of the Assumption as a rebalancing of Mariology. Lumen Gentium (LG) resituated Mary within the doctrine of the Church, echoing patristic equations of Our Lady with the Church.3 One unintended effect of the conciliar move, however, was to make devotion to Mary seem unnecessary, despite the efforts of [End Page 1097] post-conciliar popes to encourage Marian piety—in particular, John Paul II, with his Marian motto Totus Tuus.John Paul II is in many ways an exemplar of conciliar Marian devotion. His Mariology integrates Mary into ecclesiology by emphasizing her role as the paradigmatic follower of Christ.4 This discipleship is, he is careful to say, due to her maternal role and the extraordinary graces that followed from it.5 But these graces did not eliminate her need to follow her son closely; rather, they made such discipleship possible.This interplay between Mary's need and the unique graces granted to meet that need is perhaps clearest in John Paul II's presentation of Mary's faith.6 This attitude of faith is "central" to John Paul II's presentation of Mary in the encyclical Redemptoris Mater (RM), according to Joseph Ratzinger.7 Because of her faith, which is based on the prior action of God in her life (§38, quoting LG §60), she is due "a wealth of praise" that "is more than ever necessary today" (RM §34). In John Paul II, the seeming either-or of twentieth-century Mariology is dissolved, but through the introduction of a causal relationship between the two. In other words, [End Page 1098] Mary's poverty—her need for and receptivity to God—is what makes her able to be rich, to be worthy of a wealth of praise.Perhaps surprisingly, John Paul Il's presentation of Mary as transparent to the mystery of Christ echoes his theology of the body. There, he repeats a hylomorphic maxim: "The body reveals the person." In this revelation, the poverty and the wealth of the body coincide. The body is of great dignity: it can reveal the person. But it is also poor, because it does not reveal itself but rather is transparent to the inner personal mystery. In this, it resembles Mary.This essay will pick up the trail laid down by John Paul II by examining Mary under the rubric of her poverty. Her poverty, I will argue, is exemplary for the poverty of the body, and neither Mary nor the body can be understood properly without understanding poverty. In this essay, I will explore these topics by looking at the Mariology of John Paul II and Hans Urs von Balthasar, before turning to what this Mariology means for the body and for creation in general.Mary's PovertyRedemptoris Mater presents Mary as a model of pilgrim faith, one who "goes before" us on the pilgrimage (RM §§5–6 and 25–28). Mary's reliance upon faith places her among the anawim, the poor of the Lord. John Paul II quotes §55 of Lumen Gentium to note that Mary "stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently await and receive salvation from him" (RM §§8 and 11). As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Joseph Ratzinger wrote around the time of the Marian encyclical, she is "totally dependent upon God and completely directed towards him, and at the side of her Son, she is... (shrink)

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We criticize the lack of neuroanatomical precision in the Grodzinsky target article. We propose a more precise neuroanatomical characterization of syntactic processing and suggest that syntactic procedures are supported by the left frontal operculum in addition to the anterior part of the superior temporal gyrus, which appears to be associated with syntactic knowledge representation.

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Starting from Hans Jonas’ works, this essay researches the bases of human responsibility and its reasoning is made up of four points. 1. He was aware of how his experience had influenced his thought and he questioned what means reflecting starting from extreme situations: «The apocalyptic state of things, the threatening collapse of a world, the climatic crisis of civilization, the proximity of death, the stark nakedness to which all the issues of life were stripped, all these were ground enough (...) to take a new look at the very foundations of our being and to review the principles by which we guide our thinking on them». 2. Faced with these situations he rediscovered the richness of the Ancients’ thought. For example, the Stoics inherited and transformed the illuminating aspects of the theory that conceived of the ‘being’ as contemplation of the whole, which had permeated Greek natural philosophy and scientific speculation. They took it on as the capacity to identify one’s own most internal principle with the principle of the whole, in a more religious sense. The discovery in the whole of what is felt to be the highest and noblest in human beings – like reason, order, and form - makes our orientation towards a super-regulating end a liberating wisdom. 3. Jonas considers that starting from XVII century the two aspects, here distinct as external and internal, remain at the core of the issue so far as the problem of freedom is concerned. Moreover, theoretical efforts now move in the direction of rendering, of discovering a conception of freedom which is logically compatible with causal determinism, while in the history of philosophy, the problem of freedom was not born in the sphere of logic. So it is necessary to rethink Modernity and how it is possible to found human freedom and responsibility nowadays. (shrink)

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What role do science and technology play in our time? Or, more precisely, if we consider the project of the history of being that has occurred since modernity, what is the place of science and technology in this scenario? These questions were widely analyzed by Heidegger in his philosophical works, especially from the so-called “Second Heidegger” and especially in his writing The Epoch of the World Image. Based on the Heideggerian thesis that modernity is the encounter of modern technology, determined (...) planetary, with modern man, this article therefore aims to address the relevant ideas suggested by Heidegger, considering this and other of his writings, including those dedicated to the study of metaphysics. It is also the purpose of this study to deepen and update this issue, demonstrating why, for Heidegger, science and technology, both involved in the project of modernity, found an epochal sense, or a form of metaphysics: the epoch of the world image. (shrink)

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RESUMO O propósito deste artigo é aproximar o significado do pensar calculador de Heidegger e a teoria sobre a sociedade do risco de Beck, considerando suas interpelações com o significado da técnica na modernidade. Porém, mais que tratar das aproximações entre ambos os pensadores, este estudo pretende também demonstrar a importância da filosofia da técnica de Heidegger para pensar o sentido do cálculo do risco e do risco do cálculo na sociedade do risco. Assim, argumenta-se que a teoria do risco (...) de Beck confirma e atualiza o pensamento de Heidegger sobre a técnica moderna, quando se observa que o pensar calculador, que dirige e controla o modo de ser na era do técnico, manifesta-se hoje com toda claridade na sociedade do risco global. ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to bring the meaning of Heidegger’s calculative thinking and Beck’s risk society theory closer, as well as their interpellations with the meaning of technique in modernity. Nevertheless, more than dealing with the convergences between both thinkers, this study also intends to demonstrate the importance of Heidegger’s technique philosophy in order to investigate the meaning of risk calculation and of calculation risk in risk society. Therefore, it argues that Beck’s risk theory confirms and updates Heidegger’s thinking on modern technique, as one observes that calculative thinking, which directs and controls the way of being in the age of technicality, clearly manifests itself nowadays, in the global risk society. (shrink)

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Alexander of Aphrodisias, Aristotle’s commentator par excellence, rarely engages with Plato. In the present paper, however, we see him at work as an exegete of a passage in the _Phaedrus_ (245c5-9), in which Plato argues for the immortality of the soul based on its self-motion. In this paper, I focus on two ways in which Alexander deals with the passage. In his commentary on Aristotle’s _Prior Analytics_ (CAG II 1), Alexander employs the same approach to the _Phaedrus_ that he uses (...) with Aristotle’s treatises: he puts an informal argument expressed in ordinary language into the more formal shape of a syllogism. This does not mean that Alexander gives his approval to Plato’s theory. In fact, in his commentary on Aristotle’s _Topics_ (CAG II 2), Alexander introduces a polemical discussion of the same Platonic argument. Commenting on Aristotle’s denial that the soul is a self-moving substance (_Top_. IV 1.120b21-29), Alexander spells out the implicit reference to the _Phaedrus_ and criticizes Plato’s argument for not taking into account the difference between an accidental property of the soul and the essential characteristics by which it is defined. Plato’s theory of self-motion is partly accepted by Alexander and partly criticized. This paves the way for how the theory will be applied in the Aristotelian tradition, not to the soul, as in Plato, but to the ensouled body, either of the living being or of the heavens. (shrink)

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Biotechnology might contribute to solving food safety and security challenges. However, gene technology has been under public scrutiny, linked to the framing of the media and public discourse. The study aims to investigate people’s perceptions and acceptance of food biotechnology with focus on transgenic genetic modification versus genome editing. An online experiment was conducted with participants from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. The participants were presented with the topic of food biotechnology and more specifically with experimentally varied vignettes on transgenic (...) and genetic modification and genome editing. The results suggest that participants from both countries express higher levels of acceptance for genome editing compared to transgenic genetic modification. The general and personal acceptance of these technologies depend largely on whether the participants believe the application is beneficial, how they perceive scientific uncertainty, and the country they reside in. Our findings suggest that future communication about gene technology should focus more on discussing trade-offs between using an agricultural technologies and tangible and relevant benefits, instead of a unidimensional focus on risk and safety. (shrink)

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Recent philosophy of science has witnessed a shift in focus, in that significantly more consideration is given to how scientists employ models. Attending to the role of models in scientific practice leads to new questions about the representational roles of models, the purpose of idealizations, why multiple models are used for the same phenomenon, and many more besides. In this paper, I suggest that these themes resonate with central topics in feminist epistemology, in particular prominent versions of feminist empiricism, and (...) that model-based science and feminist epistemology each has crucial resources to offer the other's project. (shrink)

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There is widespread recognition at universities that a proper understanding of science is needed for all undergraduates. Good jobs are increasingly found in fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine, and science now enters almost all aspects of our daily lives. For these reasons, scientific literacy and an understanding of scientific methodology are a foundational part of any undergraduate education. Recipes for Science provides an accessible introduction to the main concepts and methods of scientific reasoning. With the help of (...) an array of contemporary and historical examples, definitions, visual aids, and exercises for active learning, the textbook helps to increase students’ scientific literacy. The first part of the book covers the definitive features of science: naturalism, experimentation, modeling, and the merits and shortcomings of both activities. The second part covers the main forms of inference in science: deductive, inductive, abductive, probabilistic, statistical, and causal. The book concludes with a discussion of explanation, theorizing and theory-change, and the relationship between science and society. The textbook is designed to be adaptable to a wide variety of different kinds of courses. In any of these different uses, the book helps students better navigate our scientific, 21st-century world, and it lays the foundation for more advanced undergraduate coursework in a wide variety of liberal arts and science courses. Selling Points Helps students develop scientific literacy—an essential aspect of _any_ undergraduate education in the 21 st century, including a broad understanding of scientific reasoning, methods, and concepts Written for all beginning college students: preparing science majors for more focused work in particular science; introducing the humanities’ investigations of science; and helping non-science majors become more sophisticated consumers of scientific information Provides an abundance of both contemporary and historical examples Covers reasoning strategies and norms applicable in all fields of physical, life, and social sciences, _as well as_ strategies and norms distinctive of specific sciences Includes visual aids to clarify and illustrate ideas Provides text boxes with related topics and helpful definitions of key terms, and includes a final Glossary with all key terms Includes Exercises for Active Learning at the end of each chapter, which will ensure full student engagement and mastery of the information include earlier in the chapter Provides annotated ‘For Further Reading’ sections at the end of each chapter, guiding students to the best primary and secondary sources available Offers a Companion Website, with: For Students: direct links to many of the primary sources discussed in the text, student self-check assessments, a bank of exam questions, and ideas for extended out-of-class projects For Instructors: a password-protected Teacher’s Manual, which provides student exam questions with answers, extensive lecture notes, classroom-ready Power Point presentations, and sample syllabi Extensive Curricular Development materials, helping any instructor who needs to create a Scientific Reasoning Course, ex nihilo. (shrink)

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The article argues that the work of literary theorist Mikhail M. Bakhtin presents a starting point for thinking about the instrumentalization of climate change. Bakhtin’s conceptualization of human–world relationships, encapsulated in the concept of ‘cosmic terror’, places a strong focus on our perception of the ‘inhuman’. Suggesting a link between the perceived alienness and instability of the world and in the exploitation of the resulting fear of change by political and religious forces, Bakhtin asserts that the latter can only be (...) resisted if our desire for a false stability in the world is overcome. The key to this overcoming of fear, for him, lies in recognizing and confronting the worldly relations of the human body. This consciousness represents the beginning of one’s ‘deautomatization’ from following established patterns of reactions to predicted or real changes. In the vein of several theorists and artists of his time who explored similar ‘deautomatization’ strategies – examples include Shklovsky’s ‘ ostranenie’, Brecht’s ‘ Verfremdung’, Artaud’s emotional ‘cruelty’ and Bataille’s ‘base materialism’ – Bakhtin proposes a more playful and widely accessible experimentation to deconstruct our ‘habitual picture of the world’. Experimentation is envisioned to take place across the material and the textual to increase possibilities for action. Through engaging with Bakhtin’s ideas, this article seeks to draw attention to relations between the imagination of the world and political agency, and the need to include these relations in our own experiments with creating climate change awareness. (shrink)

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This paper offers a critical analysis of the strategic use of biomedical models of mental illness as a means of challenging stigma. Likening mental illnesses to physical illnesses (1) reinforces notions that persons with mental illnesses are of a fundamentally “different kind,” (2) entrenches misperceptions that they are inherently more violent, and (3) promotes overreliance on diagnostic labeling and pharmaceutical treatments. I conclude that too much has been invested in the claim that the body is somehow morally neutral, and that (...) advocates of this approach oversimplify, misrepresent, and underestimate the personal and social costs of physical illness. (shrink)

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While human vulnerability has been discussed for some time in the contemporary philosophy and bioethics literature, animal vulnerability has received less attention. In this article, I investigate whether the concept of vulnerability, as it is currently used in bioethics, can be meaningfully extended to animals. Furthermore, I discuss the ethical implications of ascribing vulnerability to animals and I show what vulnerability discourse can add to debates on animal ethics. In a first step, I analyse the conditions of vulnerability ascription. By (...) taking as my basis the definition of vulnerability presented by Martin, Tavaglione and Hurst, I demonstrate that some animals fulfil the conditions of vulnerability ascription. I explore the ethical implications of vulnerability ascriptions in three domains: livestock farming, animal experimentation, and animals living in the wild. I argue that many groups of animals currently qualify as particularly vulnerable and should be afforded special protection so that they receive what they are due. I conclude by outlining the differences between vulnerability and sentience ascriptions: while sentience is a sufficient reason to ascribe moral status to a being, vulnerability draws our attention to those who are more likely to be denied what they are due. (shrink)

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The discovery of psychoanalysis and of psychotropic medications represent two radical events in understanding and treatment of mental suffering. The growth of both disciplines together with the awareness of the impracticality of curing mental suffering only through pharmacological molecules – the collapse of the “Great Illusion” - and the experience of psychoanalysts using psychotropic medications along with depth psychotherapeutic treatment, have led to integrated therapies which are arguably more effective than either modality alone. The authors review studies on the role (...) of pharmacotherapy with psychoanalysis, and the role of the analyst as the prescriber. The psychotic disorders have specifically been considered from this perspective. (shrink)

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In this paper I discuss two questions. What does Kant understand by mechanical explanation in the Critique of judgment? And why does he think that mechanical explanation is the only type of the explanation of nature available to us? According to the interpretation proposed, mechanical explanations in the Critique of judgment refer to a particular species of empirical causal laws. Mechanical laws aim to explain nature by reference to the causal interaction between the forces of the parts of matter and (...) the way in which they form into complex material wholes. Just like any other empirical causal law, however, mechanical laws can never be known with full certainty. The conception according to which we can explain all of nature by means of mechanical laws, it turns out, is based on what Kant calls ‘regulative’ or ‘reflective’ considerations about nature. Nothing in Kant’s Critique of judgment suggests that these considerations can ever be justified by reference to how the natural world really is. I suggest that what, upon first consideration, appears to be a thoroughly mechanistic conception of nature in Kant is much more limited than one might have expected. (shrink)

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When game theory was introduced to biology, the components of classic game theory models were replaced with elements more befitting evolutionary phenomena. The actions of intelligent agents are replaced by phenotypic traits; utility is replaced by fitness; rational deliberation is replaced by natural selection. In this paper, I argue that this classic conception of comprehensive reapplication is misleading, for it overemphasizes the discontinuity between human behavior and evolved traits. Explicitly considering the representational roles of evolutionary game theory brings to attention (...) neglected areas of overlap, as well as a range of evolutionary possibilities that are often overlooked. The clarifications this analysis provides are well-illustrated by—and particularly valuable for—game theoretic treatments of the evolution of social behavior. (shrink)

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Ideological language is widespread in theoretical biology. Evolutionary game theory has been defended as a worldview and a leap of faith, and sexual selection theory has been criticized for what it posits as basic to biological nature. Views such as these encourage the impression of ideological rifts in the field. I advocate an alternative interpretation, whereby many disagreements between different camps of biologists merely reflect methodological differences. This interpretation provides a more accurate and more optimistic account of the state of (...) play in the field of biology. It also helps account for biologists' tendency to embrace ideological positions. (shrink)

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Is postlapsarian sexual desire primarily altruistic or disordered? This paper utilizes the resources in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and in the contemporary magisterium to argue that recent phenomena such as the #MeToo movement underscore the inherently unstable and aggressive nature of sexual desire when it is uprooted from its natural end. Aquinas highlights three aspects of desire that more sex-positive accounts of sexuality would do well to heed: its natural infinity, its self-referential nature, and its power of rationalization. (...) By directing the motor of desire toward its natural ends, virtue—led by reason—can redirect desire away from self and toward the good. (shrink)

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In der Moraltheorie ist der ethische Naturalismus umstritten. Seit der Zurückweisung eines metaethischen Naturalismus durch G.E. Moore galt es als ausgemacht, dass die Bedeutung von „gut“ nicht mit einem natürlichen Prädikat bestimmt werden kann. Trotz dieses Vorbehalts versuchen Aristotelikerinnen und Aristoteliker neuerlich wieder, Argumente des ethischen Naturalismus in die Erörterung der Moraltheorie einzuführen. In diesem Beitrag möchte ich dafür argumentieren, dass ein in der Aristotelischen Ethik angelegtes naturalistisches Argument zur Rechtfertigung einer Konzeption guten Lebens Berücksichtigung verdient. Dazu soll zunächst der (...) Nachweis geführt werden, dass mit Aristoteles eine Konzeption der Gattungsidentität des Menschen entwickelt werden kann, die in der Aristotelischen Naturphilosophie ihre Grundlage hat. Dann wird erläutert, inwiefern die Deutung guten menschlichen Lebens als eines moralisch richtig orientierten Lebens auf die Vorstellungen der Gattungsidentität bezogen bleibt. Entgegen der Deutungen des Naturalismus als einer biologisch-wertenden Konzeption und entgegen den Ansätzen zu einem Verzicht auf eine ethische Ausdeutung des menschlichen Gedeihens wird eine perfektionistische Deutung des naturalistischen Arguments entwickelt. In moral philosophy, ethical naturalism is no longer accepted. Since G.E. Moore succeeded in rejecting metaethical naturalism, no one tries any more to define “good” with “natural terms”. Yet, recently, Aristotelians have tried to reintroduce ethical naturalism in moral theory. In this contribution I shall argue that ethical naturalism can be defended as an approach that helps identify the “good human life”. I shall first explore the notion of “species” in Aristotle’s natural philosophy as a theoretical background for explaining the notion of the human species. I shall then identify an argument that connects the idea of the human species with ideas about the good human life in a moral sense. Different from interpretations of naturalistic arguments in terms of an evaluative notion of a biological entity and different from an interpretation that reduces the notion of “human flourishing” to a political notion, I shall defend a version of ethical naturalism that deserves the name “ethical perfectionism”. (shrink)

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Vulnerability has been extensively discussed in medical research, but less so in health care. Thus, who the vulnerable in this domain are still remains an open question. One difficulty in their identification is due to the general criticism that vulnerability is not a property of only some, but rather of everyone. By presenting a philosophical analysis of the conditions of vulnerability ascription, we show that these seemingly irreconcilable understandings of vulnerability are not contradictory. Rather, they are interdependent: they refer to (...) the same concept with different likelihoods of manifestation. We argue that the general vulnerability of living beings relies on their having certain types of interests. In health care, those individuals are particularly vulnerable who are more likely to have these interests unjustly considered. They should be afforded special protection in order to receive what is due to everyone, but which they are likely to fail to receive. (shrink)

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it is common to praise the beauty of theories, the elegance of proofs, and the pleasing simplicity of explanations. We may admire, for example, the beauty of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the simplicity of Darwin’s idea of natural selection, and the elegance of a geometrical proof of Pythagoras’s theorem. Aesthetic judgments such as these have much currency among scientists, and they are employed in the search for knowledge more broadly. But while the use of aesthetic judgments in science is (...) widespread, it is not uncontroversial.1 On one side, such judgments are often inspired by the Platonic vision that beauty and truth are ultimately one. As Henri Poincaré saw it, science is the “disinterested pursuit... (shrink)

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First, I raise two objections against Ginsborg’s interpretation of natural teleology. I argue that Ginsborg’s notion of primitive normativity is too thin to account for Kant’s more substantive conception of the organism. Furthermore, I question whether Kant has room for a notion of purposiveness that is entirely divorced from intentional activity. Second, I ask about the implications of Ginsborg’s account of the relationship between aesthetic judgement and cognition. I suggest that her reading can easily be extended to allow for aesthetic (...) pleasure in empirical reflection. (shrink)

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