This paper describes a three-year project designed to build the capacity of members of research ethics committes to perform their roles and responsibilities efficiently and effectively. The project participants were made up of a cross-section of the membership of 13 Research Ethics Committees (RECs) functioning in Nigeria. They received training to develop their capacity to evaluate research protocols, monitor trial implementation, provide constructive input to trial staff, and assess the trial's success in promoting community engagement in the research. Following the (...) training, technical assistance was provided to participants on an ongoing basis and the project's impacts were assessed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results indicate that sustained investment in capacity building efforts (including training, ongoing technical assistance, and the provision of multiple tools) improved the participants’ knowledge of both the ethical principles relevant to biomedical research and how effective REC should function. Such investment was also shown to have a positive impact on the knowledge levels of other RECs members (those who did not receive training) and the overall operations of the RECs to which the participants belonged. Building the capacity of REC members to fulfill their roles effectively requires sustained effort and investment and pays off by enabling RECs to fulfill their essential mission of ensuring that trials are conducted safely and ethically. (shrink)

The problem of justifying legal punishment has been at the heart of legal and social philosophy from the very earliest recorded philosophical texts. However, despite several hundred years of debate, philosophers have not reached agreement about how legal punishment can be morally justified. That is the central issue addressed by the contributors to this volume. All of the essays collected here have been published in the highly respected journal Philosophy & Public Affairs. Taken together, they offer not only significant proposals (...) for improving established theories of punishment and compelling arguments against long-held positions, but also ori-ginal and important answers to the question, "How is punishment to be justified?"Part I of this collection, "Justifications of Punishment," examines how any practice of punishment can be morally justified. Contributors include Jeffrie G. Murphy, Alan H. Goldman, Warren Quinn, C. S. Nino, and Jean Hampton. The papers in Part II, "Problems of Punishment," address more specific issues arising in established theories. The authors are Martha C. Nussbaum, Michael Davis, and A. John Simmons. In the final section, "Capital Punishment," contributors discuss the justifiability of capital punishment, one of the most debated philosophical topics of this century. Essayists include David A. Conway, Jeffrey H. Reiman, Stephen Nathanson, and Ernest van den Haag. (shrink)

Ethical attitudes and behaviour are complex. This complexity extends to the influencers operating at different levels both outside and within the organisation, and in different combinations for different individuals. There is hence a growing need to understand the proximal and distal influencers of ethical attitudes, and how these operate in concert at the individual, organisational, and societal levels. Few studies have attempted to combine these main research streams and systematically examine their combined impact. The minority of studies that have taken (...) a combined approach have often done so using conventional statistical and analytical techniques which imply linearity between variables—a situation that rarely exists in business settings and is likely to lead to simplistic or even erroneous conclusions. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach, this paper reports on the mutual and simultaneous influence of individual demographic factors, as well as proximal and distal factors stemming from within and outside the work environment to understand individuals’ ethical views within the workplace. The multiple configurations that emerged reveal the complex nature of influencers of ethical attitudes, and reinforce the view that “one size does not fit all”. We discuss these implications together with managerial recommendations and future research directions. (shrink)

The neutrosophic sets were known since 1999, and because of their wide applications and their great flexibility to solve the problems, we used these the concepts to define a new types of neutrosophic crisp closed sets and limit points in neutrosophic crisp topological space, namly [neutrosophic crisp Gem sets and neutrosophic crisp Turig points] respactvely, we stady their properties in details and join it with topological concepts. Finally we used [neutrosophic crisp Gem sets and neutrosophic crisp Turig points] to introduce (...) of topological concepts as: neutrosophic crisp closed (open) sets, neutrosophic crisp closure, neutrosophic crisp interior, neutrosophic crisp extrior and neutrosophic crisp boundary which are fundamental for further reserch on neutrosophic crisp topology and will setrengthen the foundations of theory of neutrosophic topological spaces. (shrink)

The crisis of the theory of socioeconomic formations has recently become clearly apparent in our social philosophy. Earlier as well, the "formational" approach, with its presumption that the new order has "decisive advantages," caused perceptible epistemological difficulties associated with the effect of "inverted perspective." It followed from the theory that socialist Mongolia, Vietnam, and Cuba were a "whole epoch" ahead of the USA and other developed countries of the West that had preserved the outmoded capitalist order.

Сборник содержит материалы докладов участников межвузовской конференции, посвященной проблемам связи философии, культуры и истории, влиянию социально-культурологических аспектов на развитие философских идей.

This note gives a new proof of the 'operational extensionality' property of Abramsky's lazy lambda calculus-namely the coincidence of contextual equivalence with a co-inductively defined notion of 'applicative bisimilarity'. This purely syntactic results is here proved using a logical relation between the syntax and its denotational semantics. The proof exploits a mixed inductive/coinductive characterisation of the logical relation recently discovered by the author.

Of all the arguments for the existence of God, the argument from design is in many respects the most impressive, as everyone remarks that Kant remarked. Certainly it is an argument which seems to have appealed to the popular imagination and even today does not lack philosophical proponents. The purpose of the present paper is to examine a recent formulation of the argument. In particular I shall be concerned to bring into the open its dualist assumptions and to show how (...) these militate against its general plausibility. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Developing a Dialogical Platform for Disseminating Research through Design” by Abigail C. Durrant, John Vines, Jayne Wallace & Joyce Yee. Upshot: The experimental conference format described by Durrant et al. is intended to create an open platform for dissemination and knowledge creation. The field of open design, in which designers create structures to support creative action by others, offers relevant insights and alternative approaches. For example: while it is logical to see openness as open (...) choice, it can be productive to instead think of openness as constructed through a balance of structure and choice. (shrink)