The internet has given rise to an informational landscape that challenges epistemological hierarchies between experts and lay people. Tensions regarding how to address the growing flora of counter-authority claims are pertinent in the context of health, where warnings about misinformation co-exist with notions of patient empowerment. This context accentuates the importance of revitalizing conceptualizations of how to assess the validity of knowledge claims. In this article, we put critical realist discussions on judgemental rationality into conversation with the case of (...) a group of women who claim that the contraceptive copper IUD may lead to side effects of a kind not recognized by medical authorities. Tracing our own path from radical uncertainty to regarding the women’s claims as a plausible hypothesis, we identify what we deem to be strengths and weaknesses of the women’s claims and pinpoint the judgementally rational grounds for this assessment. (shrink)

The potential for genetically modified (GM) crops to threaten biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture is substantial. Megadiverse countries and centers of origin and/or diversity of crop species are particularly vulnerable regions. The future of sustainable agriculture may be irreversibly jeopardized by contamination of in situ preserved genetic resources threatening a strategic resource for the world—s food security. Because GM crops are truly biological novelties, their release into the environment poses concerns about the unpredictable ecological and evolutionary responses that GM species (...) themselves and the interacting biota may express in the medium and long term. One of the consequences of these processes may be a generalized contamination of natural flora by GM traits and a degradation and erosion of the commonly owned genetic resources available today for agricultural development. GM plants carrying pharmaceutical and industrial traits will pose even more dangerous risks if released in the environment. (shrink)

The páramos of Boyacá in Colombia are earmarked for delimitation to prevent the expansion of the agricultural frontier and protect endemic flora that contribute to water provision for cities. A varied conservation toolbox will be used, including the creation of protected areas for re-wilding and the ‘sustainable’ transitioning of livelihoods identified as environmentally destructive. Agriculture and cattle livestock farming has been identified for transitioning. Despite the negative discourse related to livestock holding, this paper argues that small-scale agropastoralism contributes to (...) re-peasantisation and provides the foundations for an agrobiodiverse conservation approach. Agropastoralism facilitates re-peasantisation through strong socio-economic networks, interconnected communities, the solidarity economy, and self-management of natural resources. Whilst, agropastoral mobility spatially binds social networks across large and disconnected spaces. Mobility is also fundamental to dynamic land access and pasture management, as it prevents over-grazing. This exemplifies how resilient socio-economic networks and mobile production strategies could be harnessed for agrobiodiversity, instead of land sparing and other sedentary ‘green’ economies. This paper makes conceptual contributions to ‘autonomy’ in re-peasantisation by empirically demonstrating the importance of mobile and flexible systems of production. It also makes a novel methodological contribution in applying a spatial lens that further unpacks how movement across the páramos facilitates autonomy and re-peasantisation. These themes are explored using interview data from 53 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and small-scale agropastoralists from across the páramos and field observation. The paper concludes by recommending a harnessing of agropastoral knowledge, to potentiate agrobiodiversity, for a more socio-ecologically just approach to farming and conservation in the páramos. (shrink)

Apresentação Agradecemos à presença dos professores do mestrado em Comunicação da Faculdade de Comunicação Social da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, aos alunos da graduação e da pós e aos quatro convidados pela gentileza de estarem no campus da Universidade para tratar de um assunto pouco estudado na área de comunicação. Nos currículos antigos, em especial aqueles na década de 1980, havia uma disciplina intitulada Sistemas Internacionais de Comunicação. Hoje esse é um tema ausente da grade de muitos (...) cursos, daí a importância desta palestra organizada pelos alunos, em 2006, da disciplina de Comunicação Internacional do Programa de Pós-graduação em Comunicação – mestrado – da Uerj, que também encerra as atividades da disciplina no semestre. Este encontro faz parte do Seminário de Produção Acadêmica (SPA), no qual os alunos da graduação e da pós-graduação se encontram em algumas ocasiões para debater assuntos pré-agendados. Participam desta mesa os seguintes correspondentes internacionais: Paula Gobbi, presidente da Associação dos Correspondentes de Imprensa Estrangeira no Rio de Janeiro (ACIE), que reúne praticamente todos os correspondentes estrangeiros sediados na cidade; a brasileira Ivani Flora, que trabalha para a rede de televisão SIC, de Portugal; Ana Maria Geres, diretora no Brasil da agência de notícias espanhola EFE, e Krzysztof Gluchowski, correspondente do jornal The Polish Daily, que circula na Grã-Bretanha. (shrink)

This article considers what the implications of decertification would be for single-sex services such as domestic and sexual violence support. Some reform options attached to decertification could (re)allocate authority away from the state to organisations or individuals to determine gender criteria. What would the consequences of such re-allocation be in determining eligibility to receive or access services or excluding people on the basis of a characteristic protected under equality law? Engaging with this in the context of domestic and sexual violence (...) support service provision raises a number of questions. Firstly, does the existence of gender-based violence and/or of the effects it produces require a stable category in order to address them? What benefits may emerge from providing single-sex spaces that could not be replicated in other settings? And finally, what criteria of exclusion and inclusion are currently used to determine access to spaces beyond legal gender status? (shrink)

British equality law protections for sex and gender reassignment have grown fraught as activists tussle over legal and social categories of gender, gender transitioning, and sex. This article considers the future of gender-related equality protections in relation to ‘decertification’—an imagined reform that would detach sex and gender from legal personhood. One criticism of decertification is that de-formalising gender membership would undermine equality law protections. This article explores how gender-based equality law could operate in conditions of decertification, drawing on legal thoughtways (...) developed for two other protected characteristics in equality law—religion and belief, and disability—to explore the legal responses and imaginaries that these two grounds make available. Religious equality law focuses on beliefs, communities, and practices, deemed to be stable, multivarious, and subject to deep personal commitment. Disability equality law focuses on embodied disadvantage, approached as social, relational, and fluctuating. While these two equality frameworks have considerable limitations, they offer legal thoughtways for gender oriented to both its hierarchies and its expression, including as disavowal. (shrink)

I offer a novel interpretation of Aristotle's psychology and notion of rationality, which draws the line between animal and specifically human cognition. Aristotle distinguishes belief (doxa), a form of rational cognition, from imagining (phantasia), which is shared with non-rational animals. We are, he says, “immediately affected” by beliefs, but respond to imagining “as if we were looking at a picture.” Aristotle's argument has been misunderstood; my interpretation explains and motivates it. Rationality includes a filter that interrupts the pathways between cognition (...) and behavior. This prevents the subject from responding to certain representations. Stress and damage compromise the filter, making the subject respond indiscriminately, as non-rational animals do. Beliefs are representations that have made it past the filter, which is why they can “affect [us] immediately.” Aristotle's claims express ceteris paribus generalizations, subject to exceptions. No list of provisos could turn them into non-vacuous universal claims, but this does not rob them of their explanatory power. Aristotle's cognitive science resolves a tension we grapple with today: it accounts for the specialness of human action and thinking within a strictly naturalistic framework. The theory is striking in its insight and explanatory power, instructive in its methodological shortcomings. (shrink)

What kind of thing is a reason for action? What is it to act for a reason? And what is the connection between acting for a reason and rationality? There is controversy about the many issues raised by these questions. In this paper I shall answer the first question with a conception of practical reasons that I call ‘Factualism’, which says that all reasons are facts. I defend this conception against its main rival, Psychologism, which says that practical reasons are (...) mental states or mental facts, and also against a variant of Factualism that says that some practical reasons are facts and others are false beliefs. I argue that the conception of practical reasons defended here provides plausible answers to the second and third questions above; and gives a more unified and satisfactory picture of practical reasons than those offered by its rivals. (shrink)

Flora Levin explores how and why music was so important to the ancient Greeks. She examines the distinctions that they drew between the theory of music as an art ruled by number and the theory wherein number is held to be ruled by the art of music. These perspectives generated more expansive theories, particularly the idea that the cosmos is a mirror-image of music's structural elements and, conversely, that music by virtue of its cosmic elements - time, motion, and (...) the continuum - is itself a mirror-image of the cosmos. These opposing perspectives gave rise to two opposing schools of thought, the Pythagorean and the Aristoxenian. Levin argues that the clash between these two schools could never be reconciled. Her book shows how the Greeks' appreciation of the profundity of music's interconnections with philosophy, mathematics, and logic led to groundbreaking intellectual achievements that no civilisation has ever matched. (shrink)

In this paper I examine and reply to a deflationary challenge brought against virtue ethics. The challenge comes from critics who are impressed by recent psychological evidence suggesting that much of what we take to be virtuous conduct is in fact elicited by narrowly specific social settings, as opposed to being the manifestation of robust individual character. In answer to the challenge, I suggest a conception of virtue that openly acknowledges the likelihood of its deep, ongoing dependence upon particular social (...) relationships and settings. I argue that holding this conception will indeed cause problems for some important strands of thought in virtue ethics, most notably in the tradition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. But an approach to virtue ethics modeled on David Hume's treatment of virtue and character in A Treatise of Human Nature promises to escape these problems. (shrink)

Are there nonexistent objects, i.e., objects that do not exist? Some examples often cited are: Zeus, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes, Vulcan (the hypothetical planet postulated by the 19th century astronomer Le Verrier), the perpetual motion machine, the golden mountain, the fountain of youth, the round square, etc. Some important philosophers have thought that the very concept of a nonexistent object is contradictory (Hume) or logically ill-formed (Kant, Frege), while others (Leibniz, Meinong, the Russell of Principles of Mathematics) have embraced it wholeheartedly. (...) This entry is an examination of the many questions which arise in connection with the view that there are nonexistent objects. The following are particularly salient: What reasons are there (if any) for thinking that there are nonexistent objects? If there are nonexistent objects, then what kind of objects are they? How can they be characterized? Is it possible to provide a consistent theory of nonexistent objects? What is the explanatory force of a consistent theory of nonexistent objects (if such a thing is possible)? (shrink)

In this paper I propose a way of characterizing human agency in terms of the concept of a two‐way power. I outline this conception of agency, defend it against some objections, and briefly indicate how it relates to free agency and to moral praise‐ and blameworthiness.

This article considers a postcolonial approach to comparative philosophy of education as comprising four key features: ethnography, translation, hybridity, and critique. This conception of comparative philosophy of education is first located in the postcolonial context that demands sensitivity to the ongoing dangers of orientalism. Each of these four identified aspects of comparative philosophy of education is illustrated with reference to the comparative work of a prominent contemporary Chinese philosopher, Zehou Li (李泽厚). It concludes with some observations about the challenges that (...) face a postcolonial comparative philosophy of education. (shrink)

Traditionally, research on affordances and emotions follows two separate routes. For the first time, this article explicitly links the two phenomena by investigating whether, in a discrimination task, the motivational states induced by emotional images can modulate affordances-related motor response elicited by dangerous and neutral graspable objects. The results show faster RTs: for both neutral and dangerous objects with neutral images; for dangerous objects with pleasant images; for neutral objects with unpleasant images. Overall, these data support a significant effect of (...) emotions on affordances. The article also proposes a brain neural network underlying emotions and affordance interplay. (shrink)

A l'approche de l'oeuvre philosophique d'Emmanuel Levinas, le lecteur peut remarquer que deux descriptions du sujet se dégagent : dans certains passages, le moi paraît irrémédiablement tourné vers lui-même et seulement préoccupé par son propre bien-être ; tandis que d'autres textes présentent un moi complètement tendu vers autrui, et prêt à se sacrifier pour lui. Levinas retrace l'entrée du sujet dans l'éthique comme le passage de l'un à l'autre de ces états. Pourtant ces deux attitudes semblent si radicalement opposées qu'il (...) est légitime de s'interroger : l'éthique lévinassienne est-elle vraiment possible? Flora Bastiani propose donc de lire Levinas à partir de l'étrangeté de ce saut qualitatif du moi en direction de l'autre, ce que Levinas nomme l'éthique. Cette question engagera à expliquer les concepts majeurs tels que l'altérité, le visage, la responsabilité, la substitution, la passivité ou encore la fécondité. (shrink)

The study area was a small lowland river valley (the Łęg river) located in the south-east of Poland. The object of investigation was the macrophytes of 10 river lakes with corresponding active river channel stretches of the same length as the cut-offs. The aim was to check the difference in species diversity between cut-off and active river channels. The second aim was to test the following hypothesis: vegetation of river lake has been shaped under the influence of contiguous river stretch (...) which has left a measurable mark in species abundance and composition. To test this, we checked whether a cut-off channel’s flora is more similar to flora of the contiguous river stretch, than to flora of a farther river stretch. During the course of the study it was found that the average species richness was approximately two times higher in the cut-off channels than in the river stretches. The number of the species exclusive for the river lakes was nine times higher in comparison with the river’s exclusives (not found in the cut-offs). The Shannon diversity index definitely spoke in favor of the river lakes. These results clearly show the significance of river lakes in maintaining biodiversity of aquatic ecosystems in a small river valley. We did not confirm our hypothesis concerning floristic relation between an active channel and its cut-offs. The floristic similarity between a given cut-off channel and the contiguous active river channel stretch is not stronger than the similarity between this lake and more distant river stretches. The cause of such a state of affairs may be high natural dynamics of investigated habitats and anthropogenic transformation of the river valley. (shrink)

I argue that Plato, in theTimaeus, draws deep theoretical distinctions between sensation and affect, which comprises pleasure, pain, desire and emotion. Sensation (but not affect) is both ‘fine-grained’ (having orderly causal connections with its fundamental explanatory items) and ‘immediate’ (being provoked absent any mediating psychological state). Emotions, by contrast, are mediated and coarse-grained. Pleasure and pain are coarse-grained but, in a range of important cases, immediate. TheTheaetetusassimilates affect to sensation in a way theTimaeusdoes not. Smell frustrates Timaeus because it is (...) coarse-grained, although unlike pleasure and pain it is so by accident of physiology. (shrink)

Este artigo analisa a apresentação do tema da pleonexia por Trasímaco, personagem da República de Platão. Ele explota a sua descrição do funcionamento do kratos (predomínio) tal como ele o observa em cidades reais e a conclusão normativa que ele parece tirar deste diagnóstico: ter mais (pleon ekhein) é o caminho para a prosperidade. Do ponto de vista da caracterização do seu personagem, notaremos também as atitudes competitivas que Trasímaco demonstra no diálogo com Sócrates, fazendo parecer que a persuasão seria (...) uma disputa em que persuadir equivale a ganhar, enquanto ser persuadido equivaleria a perder; mas aprender por cooperação mútua não parece uma opção. O artigo se desenvolve em três partes: I) o tratamento erístico que Trasímaco dá à persuasão, II) a apresentação do tema do motivo psico-político através do emprego da palavra kratos e derivadas, III) a tematização que Trasímaco, Glauco e Sócrates fazem da pleonexia. (shrink)

In Switzerland, research with identifiable human tissue samples, and/or its accompanying data, must be approved by a research ethics committee before it can be allowed to take place. However, as the demand for such tissue has rapidly increased in recent years, and biobanks have been created to meet these needs, committees have had to deal with a growing number of such demands. Detailed instructions for evaluating every kind of tissue request are scarce. Committees charged with evaluating research protocols therefore sometimes (...) face uncertainty in their decision-making. We examine how a pool of Swiss REC members deal with a number of cases involving human tissue, in order to determine the standards they adhere to, and their understanding and implementation of existing laws and guidelines. There is considerable divergence in the approaches and decisions of Swiss REC members regarding human tissue sample requests, particularly concerning the issue of informed consent. Despite recent trends towards less strict consent requirements for biosample research, many of our respondents continue to employ demanding standards for researchers. The question of informed consent, and the circumstances in which it is required, continues to result in differences of opinion. While room for local and cultural interpretation is essential to the workings of an REC, misunderstanding of existing guidelines, or an absence of regulation in sensitive areas, will only lead to suboptimal functioning of the REC itself. Our data suggests that there is uncertainty and disagreement on the question of consent for human tissue sample, which existing laws and guidelines may not fully clarify. Methods to address these uncertainties should be implemented in order to ensure efficient and harmonious review of research protocols. (shrink)

Reasons can play a variety of roles in a variety of contexts. For instance, reasons can motivate and guide us in our actions (and omissions), in the sense that we often act in the light of reasons. And reasons can be grounds for beliefs, desires and emotions and can be used to evaluate, and sometimes to justify, all these. In addition, reasons are used in explanations: both in explanations of human actions, beliefs, desires, emotions, etc., and in explanations of a (...) wide range of phenomena involving all sorts of animate and inanimate substances. This diversity has encouraged the thought that the term 'reason' is ambiguous or has different senses in different contexts. Moreover, this view often goes hand in hand with the claim that reasons of these different kinds belong to different ontological categories: to facts (or something similar) in the case of normative/justifying reasons, and to mental states in the case of motivating/explanatory reasons. In this paper I shall explore some of the main roles that reasons play and, on that basis, I shall offer a classification of kinds of reasons. As will become clear, my classification of reasons is at odds with much of the literature in several respects: first, because of my views about how we should understand the claim that reasons are classified into different kinds; second, because of the kinds into which I think reasons should be classified; and, finally, because of the consequences I think this view has for the ontology of reasons. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta o conceito de virtude de Alasdair MacIntyre em Depois da Virtude (1981), através de uma análise crítica dos três estágios conceituais do desenvolvimento lógico das virtudes propostos pelo autor (práticas, unidade narrativa da vida humana e tradição), assim como pondera acerca da acusação de relativismo direcionada à sua teoria.

This paper articulates and defends a novel view of the strict distinction that Aristotle makes between human and non-human mental life. We examine two crucially relevant but overlooked arguments that turn on the human capacity for reasoning and inference (syl/logismos) to reconstruct his view of what makes some cognitive processes rational and how they differ from non-rational counterparts. A creature is rational just in case its occurrent cognitive states exhibit a sequential coherence wherein prior cognitive activity constrains subsequent activity for (...) the sake of attaining truth. Processes are rational, then, in virtue of how constituent states relate to each other, not whether any given state involves some peculiar content or grasps some distinct object. This study aids, but does not exhaust, a systematic examination of the rational soul in Aristotle’s writing, based on (a) the human/animal comparisons through which he often elucidates rational cognitive capacities and (b) the distinctions that he draws between elements of rational cognition and non-rational counterparts in terms of what minimally suffices to distinguish between them. (shrink)

By considering the death of the disability activist Engracia Figueroa as the consequence of her wheelchair being damaged by an airline, this article asks whether law could accommodate a definition of legal personhood that encompasses the possibility of bodies augmented by prosthetics, technology, and mobility aids. The use of mobility aids by disabled people and the role of prosthetic penises in so-called ‘gender fraud’ cases offer two useful provocations to consider the ways in which legal personhood, if defined as largely (...) mapping on to an ideal, normative body, is becoming an increasingly inadequate legal concept in the modern age. Drawing on the work of Donna Haraway and the figure of the cyborg, this article argues that a more protean, flexible, and fluctuating understanding of legal personhood would offer both a more accurate and utopian conception of the body in law than the current essentialist approach found in a number of legal areas and particularly in English criminal law. (shrink)

Recent work supports the role of reasoning in third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions. The dynamics of the underlying cognitive processes supporting moral judgment is however poorly understood. In two preregistered experiments, we addressed this issue using a two-response paradigm. Participants were presented with moral scenarios twice: they had to provide their first judgment about an agent under both time pressure and interfering load, and were then asked to respond a second time at their own pace. In Experiment 1, participants (...) were harsher toward a malevolent agent at the second response, assigning more moral wrongness and punishment to an agent who either attempted to harm or harmed intentionally. Experiment 2 replicated the effect of intention on response change in a paradigm contrasting accidental to intentional harm scenarios. Participants were not only harsher toward intentional transgressors at the second response, but they were also less harsh toward accidental transgressors at the second response. We discuss the possibility that decoding overall intent and assigning moral judgment based on the presence or absence of a malevolent intent may be a relatively costly process. (shrink)

This study aims to describe social network and social participation and to assess associations with depressive symptoms in older persons with increased risk for dementia in Germany. We conducted a cross-sectional observational study in primary care patients (aged 60-77) as part of a multicenter cluster-randomized controlled trial (AgeWell.de). We present descriptive and multivariate analyses for social networks (Lubben Social Network Scale and subscales) and social participation (item list of social activities) and analyze associations of these variables with depressive symptoms (Geriatric (...) Depression Scale). Of 1030 included patients, 17.2% were at risk for social isolation (Lubben Social Network Scale < 12). Looking at the subscales, a reduced non-family network was found almost twice as often as a reduced family network. Patients with depressive symptoms had significantly smaller social networks than patients without depression (p < 0.001). They rather engaged in social activities of low involvement level or no weekly social activity at all (p < 0.001). The study shows associations of depressive symptoms with a decreased social network and less social participation in elderly participants. Sufficient non-family contacts and weekly social activities seem to play an important role in mental health and should be encouraged in elderly primary care patients. (shrink)

A farming systems approach to development has meant many things over the past 15 years, depending on its institutional and ecological setting, its target populations, and the goals motivating its implementation. Despite the diversity of approaches, and the sometimes rancorous discussion over which was best and why, the approach is now recognized in many places as the only one that can identify and respond to the needs of limited resource farm families, especially those in marginal ecosystems. Involving an iterative process (...) of diagnosis, design, testing and extension, the farming system approach to date has done more to change research objectives at national and international institutions than to change actual farmer practices. By legitimizing what limited resource farmers do and why they do it, a farming systems approach lends itself to policy analysis as well. Recent research in farming systems suggests greater attention should be payed to exogenous variables, including policy and infrastructure, as well as to development of technology that really responds to the felt needs of limited resource farmers in improving their level of living. (shrink)

Why read the chapter of Rousseau’s Social Contract devoted to the Roman assemblies? Because that text relies on the best available historical sources at the time, especially Carlo Sigonio’s work, to examine a key issue in Rousseau’s political philosophy: the implementation of common interest. In other words, the chapter on the comitia raises the following question: how can the people take part in public life? How can popular action maintain a republican government instead of threatening it? To understand this question, (...) and why Roman history plays a crucial part in the argument of The Social Contract, it helps to remember that for Rousseau a Republic is a government that does not act on behalf of private interests. Res publica, the recent book by renowned historian Claudia Moatti, further highlights Rousseau’s representation of the Roman Republic. The article examines in particular the meaning of the expression “public thing”, a literal translation of res publica, which appears twice in Rousseau’s text, demonstrating an understanding of Roman history that seems quite close to Claudia Moatti’s. Like her, Rousseau seems to identify two distinct visions of the Republic: one based on citizens’ rights, the other focused on the defence of the state. Today, as these two definitions of the Republic both appear in public debate, Rousseau’s vision of Rome is all the more striking and topical. (shrink)

Two critical theories—both contemporaneous and complementary—in Western philosophy of education spanning the 1960s to the 1980s will first be explicated, and then their significant intellectual values will be discussed on the basis of such a comparative account. These two critical models are the practical theory of education in the Anglophone world and the critical theory of education in the Continental Germany. I will introduce them—namely, analytic practical educational theory and German critical pädagogik—one after another, by focusing on their complementary differences, (...) involving characteristic rationalities, typical forms of criticism, corresponding ways of exercising criticalities, and frames of reference regarding the sources of their criticalities. Based on such distinctions and contrasts, I will in the final section argue for their inherent value of coexistence, their practical value in illustrating the unique construction of academic educational studies which has respectively developed in the Anglo-American world and in the Continental world. As an additional point about their epistemic value to understand educational knowledge and scholarship accumulated in the West, I will further argue that these two philosophical–critical theories of education in parallel constitute peak academic experiences. This is mainly because they are compelling evidence, demonstrating how differently yet legitimately the two camps of Western educational scholarships deal with the same issue of criticality in contrasting yet complementary ways. (shrink)

L’ouvrage propose une nouvelle traduction italienne du traité 31 (V, 8) de Plotin « Sur la beauté intelligible », assortie de nombreux éléments de commentaire. Le tout est précédé d’une longue introduction issue d’un cours donné par l’auteur, dont les quatre parties offrent une perspective historico-philosophique sur le texte, par là resitué dans le cadre du développement de la pensée antique en général et de l’œuvre plotinienne en particulier. Réalisée à partir de l’editio maior de Henry et...

Review of: A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See, Tina M. Campt (2021) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 232 pp., ISBN 978-0-26204-587-2, h/bk, $29.95 Dark Mirrors, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (2021) London: Mack Books, 240 pp., ISBN 978-1-91362-039-4, p/bk, £25.00.

The ability to exchange samples and data is crucial for the rapidly growth of biobanking. However, sharing is based on the assumption that the donor has given consent to a given use of her or his sample. Biobanking stakeholders, therefore, must choose 1 of 3 options: obtain general consent enabling multiple future uses before taking a sample from the donor, try to obtain consent again before sharing a previously obtained sample, or look for a legally endorsed way to share a (...) sample without the donor's consent. In this study, we present the results of 36 semistructured qualitative interviews with Swiss biobanking stakeholders regarding these options and the role of ethics committees in the process of authorizing sharing. Our results show that despite a lack of legal or guideline-based barriers to general consent, some stakeholders and ethics committees have reservations about this method of consent. In most cases, however, a general consent form is already in use. Many interviewees describe processes involving the ethics committees as time-consuming and cumbersome and their requirements as too demanding for donors/patients. Greater awareness of donors' opinions and preferences and the content of guidelines and recommendations could therefore be helpful for a better justified perspective of biobanking stakeholders and ethical committee members, equally. Finally, it may be necessary to differentiate between procedures governing future samples, where general consent is clearly desirable, and the use of old yet still relevant samples, where the option of using them without consent can be highly beneficial for research. (shrink)

Biobanks are essential tools for furthering a broad range of medical research areas. However, despite the plethora of national and international laws and guidelines which apply to them, the access and sharing policies of biobanks are only sparsely addressed by regulatory bodies. The ‘give and take’ process of biosample sharing is largely left up to biobank stakeholders themselves to oversee; it is therefore both in stakeholders' power, and in their interest, to ensure that sample accessibility is fair. This is an (...) important step in motivating researchers to collaborate and pool samples, and is crucial to fostering trust in the absence of universally accepted standard practices. To date, little attention has been paid to how fairness considerations affect scientific material sharing, and no empirical research has been carried out to determine the role that fairness plays in collaborative studies. In order to begin to gain understanding in this area, we interviewed 36 biobank stakeholders currently working in Switzerland, focusing on their perceptions of current and optimal fair sharing practices. Our findings reveal that fairness is an important feature of exchange situations for these stakeholders, and that they have well-formed notions about the practical elements of fair sample access, although ideas about the concept of fairness itself are vague. In order to support efforts to network biobanks, attention should be paid to this issue to reassure all involved that they are getting a fair share in their cooperative efforts. (shrink)

The embodied human subject is dynamically connected to his or her historico-sociocultural context, the soil from which a person’s psyche is nourished as multiplex meanings are absorbed and enable personal development. In each culture certain towering artistic works embody this perspective. The Dream of the Red Chamber introduces Jia Bao-yu—a scion of the prestigious Jia family—and his relationships with a large cast of characters. Bao-yu is controversial but, at the time of the family’s tragic collapse, he can be seen as (...) embodying a spiritual struggle in which his instinct, nature, sensitivity, and creativity are grounded in his transcendent relationship with a fragment of the world stone, an eternal source of energy and creativity. We are invited to draw on a metaphysical level of thought to consider his struggles with man-made hierarchies and a situated historico-sociocultural order in such a way as to live out his spiritual being. As such, the novel is closely relevant to questions of spirituality in bioethics. Through personal experiences, passions, creativity, and relationships with others, the body is inscribed, forming the soul, which may be misconstrued (for instance, through a medical or Cartesian reformulation of events) but which can be seen as the site of ethical and spiritual thought. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetivou relacionar dois teóricos que, conquanto pertencessem a momentos históricos distintos, suas ideias guardam relação e compõem a trajetória do pensamento jurídico e político da Modernidade; um, figurando como um precursor; o outro, como representante do ápice do positivismo jurídico moderno. A partir da análise dos pontos de encontro entre tais teorias, é possível refletir, de forma mais ampla, sobre a autoridade e coação do Estado exercidas pela sanção diante das tendências do pensamento jurídico atual, denominadas pós (...) positivistas. (shrink)

Les enfants atteints d’une aplasie d’oreille congénitale peuvent, en préadolescence, recourir à une chirurgie plastique reconstructrice, organisée en deux temps opératoires (technique de Nagata). Si l’aplasie est constitutive de l’image du visage dans le miroir, le self de l’enfant peut en être affecté, voire altéré. L’article souligne ainsi l’intérêt que constitue l’entretien clinique en amont d’une éventuelle chirurgie. La perspective de l’intervention en elle-même ne garantit pas la satisfaction du désir de réparation ; il semble nécessaire qu’un travail de conflictualisation (...) se mette en place du côté du préadolescent comme de ses parents. (shrink)

Pour répondre aux problématiques engendrées par la diffusion de plus en plus massive des corpus linguistiques et à l’hétérogénéité de leurs formats, nous proposons une méthode permettant de prendre en main des corpus langagiers oraux et de les convertir dans un format permettant leur exploitation outillée. Pour cette recherche, le corpus ESLO nous sert d’exemple par sa licence de diffusion, son format, son volume et ses atouts sociolinguistiques et diachroniques. Notre travail se fonde sur la compilation de ce corpus pour (...) le rendre compatible avec l’outil de textométrie TXM. Nous opérons un ensemble de transformations des données pour l’utiliser au mieux. Enfin, pour illustrer les apports de ces avancées méthodologiques, nous proposons une analyse fine et multidimensionnelle de l’usage des interrogatives dans le corpus ESLO. (shrink)

Henri Bergson, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Emmanuel Levinas ont en commun d'avoir marqué la philosophie européenne du XXe siècle. En plus de leurs oeuvres respectives, ils ont tous les trois entretenu des liens manifestes à la fois dans leurs textes et dans leurs biographies. De ce trio, on ne peut pas dire que Bergson, philosophe pourtant déjà installé dans le paysage intellectuel français, prenne la place privilégiée du maître. Ni Jankélévitch, ni Levinas n'ont été, à proprement parler, ses élèves, cependant une relation (...) étroite s'est instaurée entre eux, marquée non pas par une posture de déférence, mais par des préoccupations conceptuelles partagées ainsi qu'un travail engagé sur des questions communes. Les pensées de Jankélévitch et Levinas sont liées par un même franc retrait vis-à-vis de la majorité des courants philosophiques dominants à leur époque, notamment la vogue existentialiste. N'adhérant pas à cette tendance, Jankélévitch et Levinas se tournent vers Bergson pour saisir l'inactualité des questions posées par sa pensée ; plutôt que la restitution de ses thèses, leurs interactions reposent sur un véritable dialogue dans lequel chacun apporte une variation nouvelle. Ces trois philosophes seront finalement réunis par le partage de questions fondamentales, qui résistent à la compréhension et qui s'ouvrent au souci de l'expérience proprement humaine : métaphysique, morale, temps. Bergson, Jankélévitch et Levinas, trois philosophes français marqués par une même inquiétude face à la dégradation de l'humain ; trois moments qui forment une ligne de pensée discrète mais irradiant la philosophie contemporaine, révélée après-coup par les suites qu'elle a autorisées. Le présent ouvrage tend à mettre en évidence cette situation, à la fois décalée en son temps et marquante par sa postérité."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Background: Multi-collaborator research is increasingly becoming the norm in the field of biomedicine. With this trend comes the imperative to award recognition to all those who contribute to a study; however, there is a gap in the current “gold standard” in authorship guidelines with regards to the efforts of those who provide high quality biosamples and data, yet do not play a role in the intellectual development of the final publication. -/- Methods and findings: We carried out interviews with 36 (...) individuals working in, or with links to, biobanks in Switzerland, in order to understand how they interpret, apply and value authorship criteria in studies involving biosamples. The majority of respondents feel that authorship is an important motivating factor in working and publishing collaboratively. However, our findings suggest that in some cases, authorship guidelines are being ignored in favor of departmental standards which recognize “scientific work” as meriting authorship. -/- Conclusions: Our results support the current calls in the literature for an alternative method of crediting biomaterial contributions, in order to ensure appropriate authorship inclusion and promote collaborative research involving biobanks. (shrink)

It has come to our attention that in the original article [1] information regarding dates was omitted. The data in this study were obtained in Switzerland four years before the entering into force of the new Swiss Human Research Act in 2014, when the guidelines of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences ceased to apply. It is important for readers to know that at the time of the study there was no binding law in Switzerland, only the more open SAMS (...) guidelines that have a different legal status. We would expect to find less variation of opinions among research ethics committee members if the study were repeated after the federal law came into force. (shrink)