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 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)

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)

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...

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)

Fernando de Toro y Alfonso de Toro / "Alberto Kurapel. Teatro-Performance, Alteridad y Memoria"./ Editorial Cuarto Propio/2018/ 245 páginas/ ISBN 978-956-396-023-5.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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...

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)

Avec l’apparition d’Internet, les règles de fonctionnement dans tous les domaines de la société ont été fondamentalement modifiées. Les échanges sont devenus plus rapides, plus visibles et visuels, et pour la première fois dans l’histoire de l’humanité ils se situent à l’échelle planétaire. Penser que la sphère associative ait pu passer à côté de cette profonde mutation sociétale serait une erreur. Tout comme les autres secteurs de la société, les ONG, les associations, les institutions, les administrations du secteur public, les (...) instances présidentielles et ministérielles des États ont dû, elles aussi, entrer dans cette compétitivité effrénée et modifier leurs modes de fonctionnement vers plus de visibilité des contenus, plus d’explicatifs, plus de diversités des médias employés, plus de services en ligne et d’interactivité, afin de toucher le plus de monde possible, ou de faciliter la vie de chacun en rendant certaines démarches plus rapides. Cependant, mondialisation ne saurait rimer avec efficacité sans passer par l’étape incontournable qu’est la traduction.The arrival of the Internet has profoundly changed the rules in every area of society. Exchanges are faster, more visible and more visual, and for the first time in the history of humanity, they are happening on the scale of the entire planet. It would be a mistake to believe that non-governmental groups have been left untouched by this profound societal change. Like all other sectors of society, NGOs, associations, institutions, public sector administration and State presidential or ministerial bodies have had to join the same headlong race for competitiveness, changing the way they function to make their content ever more visible and more explanatory, broaden their media range and expand their on-line services and interactiveness, to reach as many people as possible or make life easier by offering faster responses. However, globalisation can never equal efficiency if translating is left out of the equation. (shrink)

Meat production in South Africa is on an increasing trend. In South Africa rising wealth, urbanisation and a growing middle class means South Africans are eating more processed and high-protein foods, especially meat and dairy products. These foods are more land- and water-intensive than fruit, vegetable and grain crops, and further stress existing resources. Traditional agricultural farms cannot keep up with the increasing demand for animal products and these farms are being replaced with concentrated animal feeding operations. There are a (...) wide variety of problems caused by intensive livestock production. The concerns regarding factory farming in South Africa are social issues affecting food security, health concerns, environmental concerns and ethical concerns. In order to ensure food security in future we need to consider these concerns and support more sustainable systems to produce our food. Animal agriculture, like many other industries, works on the principles of supply and demand. By decreasing the demand for these products, we can decrease their production. Individuals can do this by becoming vegetarian or vegan, but also by simply cutting down one’s consumption of meat, eggs, and milk produced in intensive livestock farms. Less meat would be produced, and there would be less harm to local communities, lower risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, less land degradation and decrease of biodiversity, less damage to our water supplies and fewer animals living lives of suffering in factory farms. (shrink)

This dissertation presents an account of fictional discourse which is teleological. According to it, questions about what is said in fiction and how it ought to be said are answerable in terms of the goals and methods belonging specifically to fiction-making as a practice. Viewed in such a way, it is argued that the incompleteness of fictional discourse and its apparent tolerance of inconsistency are distinctive of it. Moreover, it is argued that there is a sense in which one can (...) produce true statements in fiction without thereby committing one self to the thesis that words made use of in fiction are endowed with reference. Throughout the dissertation, the view espoused in it is contrasted with rival positions on the issues of what fiction is about, and whether it can be true. It is argued that a teleological account of fictional discourse can present a coherent alternative to these. (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)

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)

Im Alltag wie in ethischen Fachdiskussionen verweisen wir häufig auf moralische Intuitionen. Doch welche Art mentaler Zustand sind moralische Intuitionen eigentlich? Wie 'generieren' sie moralische Wertungen? Unter Rückgriff auf zeitgenössische Theorien aus der Philosophie des Geistes argumentiert die Autorin, dass moralische Intuitionen zu konkreten Fällen eine Form der Emotion sind. Sie spezifiziert, in Anlehnung an Millikans biosemantisches Intentionalitätskonzept und Prinz? Emotionstheorie, was diese moralisch wertenden Emotionen auszeichnet und welche mentalen Prozesse ihrem Auftreten zugrunde liegen. Burgbachers Modell gibt eine zeitgemässe, empirisch (...) orientierte Antwort auf die stark diskutierte Vorfrage der Ethik und Metaethik nach der Natur moralischer Intuitionen. Es bietet eine solide Basis für die Diskussion des epistemischen und handlungsbezogenen Status moralischer Intuitionen. (shrink)

Nanotechnology has recently been identified with principles of sustainability and with a ‘green’ agenda generally . Some maintain that this green dream of nanotechnology is a rather ephemeral societal phenomenon that owes its existence to the campaign ploys of politics and business. This paper argues that deeper lying societal and cognitive structures are at work here that complement or even substantiate in some sense the seemingly manipulative saying of a greening of nanotechnologies. Taking seriously the concept of ‘green nano’, this (...) paper examines the common ground between sustainability discourse and the discourse of nanotechnology. Green nanotechnology is understood as a boundary concept in which disparate discourses and concepts join together. The primary concern of the paper is to show that nanodiscourse and ecodiscourse share visions of control and of excess. Both ecotechnology and nanotechnology accept and incorporate arguments about limited growth, and each develops strategies of control—be it through a new-found precision in the control of material flows or through greater efficiency in product design. (shrink)

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

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)

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)

While unicellular microbes such as phytoplankton (marine algae) have long been considered immortal unless eaten by predators, recent research suggests that under specific conditions entire populations of phytoplankton actively kill themselves; their assumed atemporality is being revised as marine ecologists recognize phytoplankton’s important role in the global carbon cycle. Drawing on empirical research into programmed cell death in marine microbes, this article explores how, in their study of microbial death, scientists change not only our understanding of microbial temporality, but also (...) reconstruct the relationship between life and death, biological individuality and assumptions about a natural teleology associated with bounded biological systems and genetic programmes. Reading this research together with a Derridean deconstruction of the limit between human and other animals with respect to death, this article explores how the deconstruction of individuality from within biology may suggest alternatives to our anthropocentric notion of time and embodiment. (shrink)

A new analytical framework for understanding literary videogames, the literary-ludic spectrum, illustrated by close readings of selected works. In this book, Astrid Ensslin examines literary videogames—hybrid digital artifacts that have elements of both games and literature, combining the ludic and the literary. These works can be considered verbal art in the broadest sense (in that language plays a significant part in their aesthetic appeal); they draw on game mechanics; and they are digital-born, dependent on a digital medium (unlike, for (...) example, conventional books read on e-readers). They employ narrative, dramatic, and poetic techniques in order to explore the affordances and limitations of ludic structures and processes, and they are designed to make players reflect on conventional game characteristics. Ensslin approaches these hybrid works as a new form of experimental literary art that requires novel ways of playing and reading. She proposes a systematic method for analyzing literary-ludic (L-L) texts that takes into account the analytic concerns of both literary stylistics and ludology. After establishing the theoretical underpinnings of her proposal, Ensslin introduces the L-L spectrum as an analytical framework for literary games. Based on the phenomenological distinction between deep and hyper attention, the L-L spectrum charts a work's relative emphases on reading and gameplay. Ensslin applies this analytical toolkit to close readings of selected works, moving from the predominantly literary to the primarily ludic, from online hypermedia fiction to Flash fiction to interactive fiction to poetry games to a highly designed literary “auteur” game. Finally, she considers her innovative analytical methodology in the context of contemporary ludology, media studies, and literary discourse analysis. (shrink)

How can a confederation of business and industry influence companies and make them more aware of ethical issues? This article examines the work of Norwegian Business and Industry , and the results it has achieved. The author is Assistant Director of NHO, P.b. 5250, Majorstua, 0303 Oslo, and she has been responsible for its business ethics programme for the past three years. This article comes to us through the agency of our Associate Editor for Norway, Dr Heidi von Weltzien Høivik, (...) of the Norwegian School of Management, who has recently been instrumental in founding a Norwegian Centre for Business Ethics. (shrink)

Drawing on scientific accounts of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and their detection technologies, this paper asks what conceptions of time and species presences enable a mapping of the biological productivity of microorganisms onto economic productivity or the loss thereof and how certain modes of technoscientific detection of specific algae materialize such a conception of time, circumscribing what counts as harmfulness and to whom. Moving beyond the mere affirmation of the activity of nonhuman nature, I seek to demonstrate how an epistemological (...) anthropocentrism in scientific knowledge production that opposes historically flexible and technologically enhanced human creativity to its atemporal object of study manifests itself as a political anthropocentrism that presupposes “our” time as the unalterable movement of Homo Economicus. Such a political conception of time is supported by a view of “life itself” as a teleological process toward ever increasing complexity, effacing the possibility of asking to whom the current ecological transformations matter. (shrink)

Bien que les violences conjugales soient un véritable problème de santé publique, force est de constater qu’elles restent souvent indifférenciées. Les auteurs discutent dans cette contribution des enjeux de la violence causée par des vulnérabilités spécifiques, inhérentes souvent à la conjugalité mais se répercutant sur la parentalité et l’enfant, et qui nécessitent l’intervention de la justice. Ils se basent sur le dispositif « Protection médiation prévention » ( pmp ) pour illustrer que la justice peut présenter un vecteur thérapeutique utile (...) à appeler à la (juste) place de chaque membre de la famille dès l’annonce d’un conflit en amont de la violence et l’installation de troubles psychologiques pérennes, notamment pour l’enfant. La confrontation avec la justice peut être l’occasion de sensibiliser aux souffrances engendrées par les violences et créer une amorce thérapeutique. Pour cela, les professionnels doivent pouvoir discriminer ce qui relève du registre du conflit et de la violence tout comme de la dysparentalité et de la conjugopathie. Ces réflexions et expériences de terrain ont débouché sur une recherche-action à l’université de Caen qui vise à proposer des interventions spécifiques et différenciées dans des situations de conflits et/ou de violence dans le cadre de l’assistance éducative. (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)