In the asymptotic safety paradigm, a quantum field theory reaches a regime with quantum scale invariance in the ultraviolet, which is described by an interacting fixed point of the Renormalization Group. Compelling hints for the viability of asymptotic safety in quantum gravity exist, mainly obtained from applications of the functional Renormalization Group. The impact of asymptotically safe quantum fluctuations of gravity at and beyond the Planck scale could at the same time induce an ultraviolet completion for the Standard Model of (...) particle physics with high predictive power. (shrink)

Due to the socio-demographic change in most developed western countries, elderly populations have been continuously increasing. Therefore, preventive and assistive systems that allow elderly people to independently live in their own homes as long as possible will become an economical if not ethical necessity. These respective technologies are being developed under the term "Ambient Assistive Technologies". The EU-funded AAT-project Ambient Lighting Assistance for an Ageing Population has established the long-term goal to create an adaptive system capable of improving the residential (...) lighting conditions of single living elderly persons also aiming at supporting the preservation of their independence. Results of an earlier survey revealed that the elderly perceived their current lighting situation as satisfactory, whereas interviewers assessed in-house lighting as too dark and risk-laden. The overall results of ALADIN showed a significant increase in well-being from the baseline final testing with the new adaptive lighting system. Positive results for wellbeing and life quality suggest that the outcome effects may be attributed to the introduction of technology as well as to social contacts arising from participating in the study. The technological guidance of the study supervisors, in particular, may have produced a strong social reactivity effect that was first observed in the famous Hawthorne experiments in the 1930s. As older adults seem to benefit both from meaningful social contacts as well as assistive technologies, the question arises how assistive technology can be socially embedded to be able to maximize positive health effects. Therefore ethical guidelines for development and use of new assistive technologies for handicapped/older persons have to be developed and should be discussed with regard to their applicability in the context of AAT. (shrink)

Hoy en día vivimos aún con el estereotipo de las dos culturas, con la idea de una cierta incomunicabilidad entre ciencias y humanidades, en términos más generales: entre la esfera de la ciencia y la de la cultura. Este artículo presenta una visión filosófica de la relación entre cultura y ciencia más allá de la tópica dicotomía, sosteniendo en cambio un enfoque en el que se concibe la ciencia como fenómeno cultural. Un recorrido histórico-sistemático por algunos hitos de la filosofía (...) de la cultura y la filosofía de la ciencia muestra cómo las dos se compenetran entre sí y se influyen mutuamente. Poner el foco en las convergencias entre ambas permite identificar una serie de preocupaciones y retos compartidos que conciernen al campo de la epistemología en su conjunto: afrontar la complejidad de la condición epistémica y la vulnerabilidad cognitiva del ser humano; hacer frente a las posiciones más extremas tanto del relativismo como del fundamentalismo; y desarrollar un concepto de responsabilidad epistémica en los distintos ámbitos de conocimiento para contrarrestar la cultura de desconfianza y la percepción de nuestra época como era de la posverdad. (shrink)

This article addresses a number of phenomena in the field of digital communication - disinformation, infodemics and conspiracy mania - that promote indifference regarding the distinction between truth and lies, fact and fiction, opinion and knowledge. They have thus decisively altered users' patterns of rationality and common sense and contributed to the rise of anti-democratic and anti-scientific positions. To address this complex problem, a systemic approach is provided that considers these phenomena to be factors that disturb the ethical-epistemic equilibrium between (...) uncertainty, trust and responsibility. After identifying a set of dynamics generated by these disruptive factors, three aspects are explored in depth: the polarisation and lack of a deliberative culture, the necessary correction of the social image of scientific practice, and the impact of the post-truth discourse. The article concludes with reflections on redefining the three key concepts of uncertainty, trust and responsibility in light of the demands of the digital sphere. (shrink)

National greenhouse-gas accounting should reflect how countries’ policies and behaviours affect global emissions. Actions that contribute to reduced global emissions should be credited, and actions that increase them should be penalized. This is essential if accounting is to serve as accurate guidance for climate policy. Yet this principle is not satisfied by the two most common accounting methods. Production-based accounting used under the Kyoto Protocol does not account for carbon leakage — the phenomenon of countries reducing their domestic emissions by (...) shifting carbon-intensive production abroad1. Consumption-based accounting2,3 does not credit countries for cleaning up their export industries, and it also punishes some types of trade that could contribute to more carbon efficient production worldwide. We propose an improvement to consumption-based carbon accounting that takes technology differences in export sectors into account and thereby tends to more correctly reflect how national policy changes affect total global emissions. We also present empirical results showing how this new measure redraws the global emissions map. (shrink)

Im Zuge einer Änderung des Arzneimittelgesetzes im November 2016 hat der Deutsche Bundestag beschlossen, dass gruppennützige Arzneimittelforschung mit nicht-einwilligungsfähigen Erwachsenen unter bestimmten Bedingungen erlaubt sein soll. Das entsprechende Gesetz wird voraussichtlich im Jahr 2020 in Kraft treten. Das ethische Problem dieser Forschung besteht darin, dass Personen, die nicht in der Lage sind, ihre Einwilligung in die Forschung zu erteilen, nicht vom medizinischen Fortschritt ausgeschlossen werden sollen. Der Gesetzgeber hat versucht, diesen Konflikt zu lösen, indem er die Zulässigkeit der gruppennützigen Forschung (...) mit nicht-einwilligungsfähigen Erwachsenen an die Voraussetzung geknüpft hat, dass Studienteilnehmer ihre Einwilligung zuvor in einer Probandenverfügung erteilen. Der Beitrag hat das Ziel, die neue Regelung zur gruppennützigen Forschung mit nicht-einwilligungsfähigen Erwachsenen aus ethischer Sicht zu bewerten. Die Frage, ob die Gesetzesänderung weitere Forschung ermöglichen wird, hängt wesentlich davon ab, ob man mit Blick auf Studien, die sowohl eigennützige als auch gruppennützige Maßnahmen umfassen, eine Gesamtbetrachtung oder eine Einzelbetrachtung dieser Studien vorzieht. In unserem Beitrag argumentieren wir für eine Einzelbetrachtung. Es wird weiterhin die Auffassung vertreten, dass die im Gesetzgebungsverfahren vorgeschlagene Probandenverfügung die Selbstbestimmung der Patienten fördern kann, wenn sie mit Blick auf die mit der Teilnahme verbundenen Eingriffe ein Mindestmaß an Bestimmtheit erreicht.Zusammenfassend wird die Auffassung vertreten, dass gruppennützige Forschung mit nicht-einwilligungsfähigen Erwachsenen trotz der genannten Bedenken unter bestimmten Bedingungen ethisch zulässig sein kann. In der Gesamtabwägung erscheint dabei die eindeutige Definition und strenge Beachtung der Bedingungen der EU-Verordnung 536/2014 mit Blick auf einen ethisch gerechtfertigten Einbezug von nicht-einwilligungsfähigen Erwachsenen in gruppennützige Forschung als besonders bedeutsam. (shrink)

In Paul Ricœur's thought, suffering is primarily addressed from an existential and phenomenological perspective, as illustrated in the text of the lecture "Suffering is not Pain," delivered to an audience of psychiatrists. In this thematic issue, we present the very first English translation of this text. The contributions of the various authors explore Ricœur's definition of suffering as well as the dialogue he establishes between the philosophical and clinical approaches. By tracing the genealogy of suffering in Ricœur's systematic work, this (...) introduction highlights the conceptual shifts resulting from methodological changes, notably the transition from eidetic phenomenology to a hermeneutic phenomenology with ontological implications, along with the plurality of his motivations and interests (psychoanalytic, theological). Suffering, as the negativity of existence, while exposed to the risk of a solipsistic affect, nonetheless unfolds a unique semiology, in an openness to the other, which Ricœur inquires in "Suffering is not Pain.". (shrink)

Contextualizing Ricœur’s lecture “Suffering is Not Pain” alongside his other peripheral works on the matter uncovers a “practical philosophy,” that could provide new perspectives for clinicians faced with suffering. The analysis unfolds in four stages. First, it examines Ricœur’s interest in dialoguing with psychiatry to nourish his philosophical work. Second, it highlights Ricœur’s contributions as a third party to help psychiatrists overcome some major issues at that time. Third, it contextualizes the topic of suffering within the prevailing medical views at (...) that time, and their corresponding issues in clinical practice. Finally, it delineates three principles for an applied ethics of suffering; namely, the need to dissociate suffering from any moral justification, approaching the therapeutic relationship as an alliance, and a minimal recognition that patients endure despite the damages suffering inflict on the self-other axis, to preserve their dignity. (shrink)

Putting laypeople in an active role as direct expert contributors in the design of service robots becomes more and more prominent in the research fields of human–robot interaction and social robotics. Currently, though, HRI is caught in a dilemma of how to create meaningful service robots for human social environments, combining expectations shaped by popular media with technology readiness. We recapitulate traditional stakeholder involvement, including two cases in which new intelligent robots were conceptualized and realized for close interaction with humans. (...) Thereby, we show how the robot narrative together with aspects of power balancing stakeholders, such as hardware constraints and missing perspectives beyond primary users, and the adaptivity of robots through machine learning that creates unpredictability, pose specific challenges for participatory design processes in HRI. We conclude with thoughts on a way forward for the HRI community in developing a culture of participation that considers humans when conceptualizing, building, and using robots. (shrink)

Subliminal perception occurs when prime stimuli that participants claim not to be aware of nevertheless influence subsequent processing of a target. This claim, however, critically depends on correct methods to assess prime awareness. Typically, d9 (‘‘d prime’’) tasks administered after a priming task are used to establish that people are unable to discriminate between different primes. Here, we show that such d9 tasks are influenced by the nature of the target, by attentional factors, and by the delay between stimulus presentation (...) and response. Our results suggest that the standard d9 task is not a straightforward measure of prime visibility. We discuss the implications of our findings for subliminal perception research. (shrink)

This paper proposes an analytical framework for the analysis of organizational cognition that borrows from distributed and ecological cognition. In so doing, we take a case study featuring a decision on the topic of agreeing on a set point in the agenda of a meeting. It is through the analysis of a few minutes of video-recording used in the case that enables us to demonstrate the power of applying distributed and ecological cognition to organizing processes. Cognitive mechanism, resources, and processes (...) are identified within this combined framework. Mechanisms are described as “socio-material” (CM1)—where “people” and “artifacts” are the related cognitive resources—and as “conceptual” (CM2)—with “group” identity, “topic” understanding, meaning of “procedures,” and perception of “time” as resources. Processes are defined as “coupling,” “de-coupling,” and “un-coupled” depending on the type of relation in place. Finally, the paper presents an agent-based computational simulation to demonstrate the potentials of operationalizing this approach. (shrink)

Although the main responsibility for informed consent of medical procedures rests with doctors, nurses’ roles are also important, especially as patient advocates. Nurses’ preparation for this role in settings with a hierarchical and communal culture has received little attention. We explored the views of hospital managers and nurses regarding the roles of nurses in informed consent and factors influencing these roles. We conducted a qualitative study in a private, multispecialty hospital in Indonesia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven managers. Two (...) rounds of focus group discussions with nurses (n = 27) were conducted. Constant comparative approach was used in the analysis. Nurses can act as manager, witness, information giver, and advocate in the informed consent process. These roles are influenced by nurses’ preparedness, hospital culture and policy, patients’ understanding, family involvement, and cost-related issues. In preparation for these tasks, nurses should acquire communication skills, clinical knowledge, and legal and ethical knowledge. (shrink)

BackgroundThe public’s attitudes to conscientious objection are likely to influence political decisions about CO and trust towards healthcare systems and providers. Few studies examine the pub...

Existing empirical research often do not explain which concepts about genetics underlie the assumption that genetic information is deemed important for donor-conceived offspring. This study focused on how donor-conceived individuals following anonymous sperm donation give meaning to and make sense of genes and genetics. Analysis is based on focus groups and interviews with adult donor-conceived offspring. Findings suggest that genes are part of their specific context of being donor-conceived but also play a role in daily life. Genes make sense on (...) an individual level and a relational level, both on parent-child as sibling-level. On an individual level they were perceived as (1) a biological starting package, (2) their own unique combination and (3) as a reference point. On a relational level, genes were seen as (1) “person-al”, (2) connecting and (3) locating individuals. This information is essential for those supporting/counseling donor conceived offspring and families as well as for policy-members. (shrink)

Consolation is needed when a human being suffers (i.e. feels alienated from him-or herself, from other people, from the world or from his or her ultimate source of meaning). The aim of this study was to illuminate the meaning of consolation. Tape-recorded narrative interviews were carried out with 18 professionals from various spheres. The transcribed interviews were interpreted hermeneutically. A model of consolation is outlined in a drawing. It states that the mediator and the receiver of consolation must become ready (...) for consolation before it can take place. To be ready means to be present and available. Availability means expressing suffering and listening respectively, and thereby opening up for communion and consoling dialogue. Communion brings about contact with the sacred dimension that human beings share and thus with goodness, light, joy, beauty and life. Consolation involves a shift of perspective and an experience of meaning in spite of suffering. (shrink)

Question the scientific method -- Different modes of experimentation -- Tirelessly tinkering with unruly conditions -- Practising experiments in a world of environmental concerns.

In Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city, engineers work hard to control water flows and provide different sectors with clean and sufficient water. In 2011, only 10 percent of the totality of water used daily by Arequipa’s then close to 1 million people—in households, tourism, industry, and mining—was treated before it was returned to the river where it continues its flow downstream towards cultivated fields and, finally, into the Pacific Ocean. It takes specialized knowledge and manifold technologies to manage water and (...) sustain life in Arequipa, and engineers are central actors for making water flow. Examining the ecology of water management, this article asks to what extent we can talk of a way of knowing and enacting water that is particular to engineers. Through engineering practices, a technical domain emerges as separate from and superior to political and social domains. This production of categories can be understood as practices of purification. However, a purely technical grip on water is never possible. Unruly elements, like weather, contamination, urban dwellers, and competing interests, interfere and make processes of intervention unstable. Water is never completely cleaned, and, equally, the continuous processes of purification of categories and domains take place while other processes work to blur their boundaries. (shrink)

Images from the nanoworld are not at all disorienting or bewildering, as one might expect from contemplating the strange and surprising features that arise where classical physics comes to an end and quantum effects begin to appear. Instead, we see the traces of explorers in a world that appears to be infinitely malleable. The paper shows that the capability to visualize processes and phenomena at the nanoscale is a matter not only of research technologies and the advancement of observational techniques, (...) but also a matter of developing a visual setting that exhibits knowledge and practice, surprise and control. The surface is such a stage and so is the landscape: they invite us to become immersed and move around like someone who goes for a walk. In order to appreciate this pictorial, as well as discursive, setting we turn to “strollology” as a method of reconstructing the world that is experienced in the manner of walking. With the notion of imagescape this method is applied to the modes of partaking in the nanoworld and its specific features. Rather than articulate theoretical or metaphysical presuppositions these nanoscapes serve to validate the very idea of nanotechnology. (shrink)

Demoting Vishnu: Ritual, Politics, and the Unraveling of Nepal’s Hindu Monarchy. By Anne T. Mocko. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 246.

This paper studies the effects of social comparison on risk taking behavior. In our theoretical framework, decision makers evaluate the consequences of their choices relative to both their own and their peers’ conditions. We test experimentally whether the position in the social ranking affects risk attitudes. Subjects interact in a simulated workplace environment where they perform a work task, receive possibly different wages, and then undertake a risky decision that may produce an extra gain. We find that social comparison matters (...) for risk attitudes. Subjects are more risk averse in the presence of small social gain than social loss. In addition, risk aversion is decreasing in the size of the social gain. (shrink)

Although the main responsibility for informed consent of medical procedures rests with doctors, nurses’ roles are also important, especially as patient advocates. Nurses’ preparation for this role in settings with a hierarchical and communal culture has received little attention. We explored the views of hospital managers and nurses regarding the roles of nurses in informed consent and factors influencing these roles. We conducted a qualitative study in a private, multispecialty hospital in Indonesia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven managers. Two (...) rounds of focus group discussions with nurses (n = 27) were conducted. Constant comparative approach was used in the analysis. Nurses can act as manager, witness, information giver, and advocate in the informed consent process. These roles are influenced by nurses’ preparedness, hospital culture and policy, patients’ understanding, family involvement, and cost-related issues. In preparation for these tasks, nurses should acquire communication skills, clinical knowledge, and legal and ethical knowledge. (shrink)

In 1992, Ricœur delivered his lecture, "Suffering is Not Pain," at a psychiatry colloquium, addressing clinicians eager to explore this profound human experience, which is notably absent from the traditional psychiatric corpus. Ricœur examined the semiology of suffering through three moments: the specific relationship between oneself and the other, the characterization of a diminution in the power to act, and, finally, a hermeneutic reflection on suffering as an enigma that has something to teach—both at the level of self-reflection on one’s (...) own existence and in the context of relationships with others. It thus appears that suffering can open the way to a hermeneutic of the symbols of human existence, whose meaningful manifestations can also be clinical. However, this text does not belong to Ricœur’s systematic work. To understand its significance this annotated translation accompanied by its explanatory introduction, allows for a detailed reading that considers the intertextual references and the meanings implied by Ricœur’s expressions. By integrating clinical and philosophical language, this translation acknowledges the importance of multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of suffering. (shrink)

Francis Bacon's experimental philosophy is discussed, and the way in which it not only shapes scientific methodology but also deeply pervades all philosophical and social learning. Bacon draws us in to participate in an experiment with experience. The central driving force is the idea that learning how to learn is necessary in order to know. To meet this requirement, he considers the relation of form and content of pivotal importance, and therefore the selection of the literary form and the form (...) of data inscription is decisive in the construction of a heuristic tool. His inductive method serves a dual purpose: first, the so-called indicative form aims at securing knowledge by a comprehensible procedure that controls and guides hypothetical thinking. Second, the literary forms "fragment" and "aphorism" embody the subjunctive, and invite intellectual openness and even speculation. In this article, special emphasis is put on Bacon's use and justification of the aphorism. Bacon's pervasive experimentalism meets in some sense today's broad adoption of the experimental mode. His philosophy calls for an ontology that is also at work in recent notions of co-action and co-working, or of affordance. (shrink)

This paper reads Carlos Soto Román’s “Chile Project: [Re-classified],” a documentary poem that remediates declassified state documents as an ambivalent form of witnessing bureaucracy and state viol...

Dans la pensée de Paul Ricœur, la souffrance est principalement abordée sous son aspect existentiel et phénoménologique, comme l’illustre le texte de la conférence « La souffrance n’est pas la douleur », présentée devant un public de psychiatres. Dans ce numéro thématique, nous proposons la toute première traduction anglaise de ce texte. Les contributions des différents auteurs examinent la définition de la souffrance chez Ricœur ainsi que le dialogue qu’il établit entre l’approche philosophique et l’approche clinique. En retraçant la généalogie (...) de la souffrance dans l’œuvre systématique de Ricœur, cette introduction met en lumière les inflexions conceptuelles issues des changements méthodologiques, marqués notamment par une transition de la phénoménologie eidétique à une phénoménologie herméneutique aux implications ontologiques, ainsi que la pluralité de ses motivations et intérêts (psychanalytiques, théologiques). La souffrance, négativité de l’existence, bien qu’exposée au risque d’un affect solipsiste, déploie une sémiologie propre, dans une ouverture à l’autre, que Ricœur explore dans « La souffrance n’est pas la douleur ». (shrink)

At a time when humanity experiences its greatest advances, major conflicts and abuses arise around the world due to a lack of humanism and reason within the meaning of the Enlightenment. Modernity and western comfort in our globalized society have not helped share and balance the wealth, nor preserve the natural resources; it has not prevented crimes against humanity nor the most insane dictatorial actions of the 20th and early 21st centuries. This went hand in hand with a massive degradation (...) of the environment. Could the animal be the solution to all the mistakes we have made during the last century, instead of being considered an inferior, a slave? Could he not be the one who has managed the best in the fields of intelligence, self-regulation and respect of his vital environment? Should we not rather turn toward the animal to find a new balanced model? Respecting the environment and his peers seems to be the most striking evidence of intelligence, does it not? The animal has achieved this. Man has not. Focusing on the way man has treated animals may therefore help us to understand why we have treated our peers so badly. (shrink)

Theories are processes modelled by thought. When they evolve in time, they are transformed and become new theories. They may cross from one academic discipline to another, then open up to new areas of human knowledge, mixing together the humanities, art, science and even spirituality. The way they are modelled reveals their plasticity and their elasticity is tested in their potential for transfer from one domain to another, while the different contacts they make and mergers they undergo generate a certain (...) hybridity. Plasticity, elasticity and hybridity are the triad which make the transfer of theories possible. (shrink)