Bianca-Alexandra Savu ABSTRACT: This article discusses the proposal of accommodating grounding theories and structural realism, with the aim to provide a metaphysical framework for structural realism. Ontic structural realism, one of the most accepted metaphysical versions for structural realism, is taken into account here, with the intention of analyzing the framework in which...

BackgroundBiobanking biospecimens and consent are common practice in paediatric research. We need to explore children and young people’s (CYP) knowledge and perspectives around the use of and consent to biobanking. This will ensure meaningful informed consent can be obtained and improve current consent procedures.MethodsWe designed a survey, in co-production with CYP, collecting demographic data, views on biobanking, and consent using three scenarios: 1) prospective consent, 2) deferred consent, and 3) reconsent and assent at age of capacity. The survey was disseminated (...) via the Young Person’s Advisory Group North England (YPAGne) and participating CYP’s secondary schools. Data were analysed using a qualitative thematic approach by three independent reviewers (including CYP) to identify common themes. Data triangulation occurred independently by a fourth reviewer.ResultsOne hundred two CYP completed the survey. Most were between 16–18 years (63.7%, N = 65) and female (66.7%, N = 68). 72.3% had no prior knowledge of biobanking (N = 73).Acceptability of prospective consent for biobanking was high (91.2%, N = 93) with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘potential benefits outweigh individual risk’, 'frugality', and ‘(in)convenience’.Deferred consent was also deemed acceptable in the large majority (84.3%, N = 86), with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘body integrity’ and ‘sample frugality’. 76.5% preferred to reconsent when cognitively mature enough to give assent (N = 78), even if parental consent was previously in place. 79.2% wanted to be informed if their biobanked biospecimen is reused (N = 80).ConclusionProspective and deferred consent acceptability for biobanking is high among CYP in the UK. Altruism, frugality, body integrity, and privacy are the most important themes. Clear communication and justification are paramount to obtain consent. Any CYP with capacity should be part of the consenting procedure, if possible. (shrink)

This study investigated entrepreneurs’ motivations to implement circular economy (CE) practices and the ways in which their approaches to CE practices differed by their sociocultural context. The research aimed to contrast the contemporary instrumental perspective on CE through an ecologically dominant logic. The empirical analysis focused on Finland and Japan, two countries with distinct sociocultural contexts but similar regulatory environments regarding the CE. The study analysed entrepreneurs’ motivations towards the CE through self-determination theory that makes a distinction between different levels (...) of internalization in motivations. The Finnish entrepreneurs were characterised by more frequent intertwined intrinsic/transcendent motivations and a vocal approach to CE. The Japanese entrepreneurs’ motivations were more varied; some were intrinsically interested in the CE, while some were even unaware of the CE concept despite operating CE businesses. The Japanese entrepreneurs resorted to masking their CE businesses to better relate with the surrounding linear system. The study shows how the individualistic Finnish culture fostered progress on the CE, while the collectivistic Japanese culture emphasised the need for relatedness and caused stagnation in the CE in its society. (shrink)

The phrase ‘person‐centred care’ (PCC) reminds us that the fundamental philosophical goal of caring for people is to uphold or promote their personhood. However, such an idea has translated into promoting individualist notions of autonomy, empowerment and personal responsibility in the context of consumerism and neoliberalism, which is problematic both conceptually and practically. From a conceptual standpoint, it ignores the fact that humans are social, historical and biographical beings, and instead assumes an essentialist or idealized concept of personhood in which (...) a person is viewed as an individual static object. From a practical standpoint, the application of such a concept of personhood can lead to neglect of a person's fundamental care needs and exacerbate the problems of social inequity, in particular for older people and people with dementia. Therefore, we argue that our understanding of PCC must instead be based on a dynamic concept of personhood that integrates the relevant social, relational, temporal and biographical dimensions. We propose that the correct concept of personhood in PCC is one in which persons are understood as socially embedded, relational and temporally extended subjects rather than merely individual, autonomous, asocial and atemporal objects. We then present a reconceptualization of the fundamental philosophical goal of PCC as promoting selfhood rather than personhood. Such a reconceptualization avoids the problems that beset the concept of personhood and its application in PCC, while also providing a philosophical foundation for the growing body of empirical literature that emphasizes the psychosocial, relational, subjective and biographical dimensions of PCC. (shrink)

Governments must determine the legal procedures by which their residents are registered, or can register, as organ donors. Provided that governments recognize that people have a right to determine what happens to their organs after they die, there are four feasible options to choose from: opt-in, opt-out, mandated active choice, and voluntary active choice. We investigate the ethics of these policies' use of nudges to affect organ donor registration rates. We argue that the use of nudges in this context is (...) morally problematic. It is disrespectful of people's autonomy to take advantage of their cognitive biases since doing so involves bypassing, not engaging, their rational capacities. We conclude that while mandated active choice policies are not problem free—they are coercive, after all—voluntary active choice, opt-in, and opt-out policies are potentially less respectful of people's autonomy since their use of nudges could significantly affect people's decision making. (shrink)

We suggest that philosophical accounts of epistemic effects of diversity have given insufficient attention to the relationship between demographic diversity and information elaboration, the process whereby knowledge dispersed in a group is elicited and examined. We propose an analysis of IE that clarifies hypotheses proposed in the empirical literature and their relationship to philosophical accounts of diversity effects. Philosophical accounts have largely overlooked the possibility that demographic diversity may improve group performance by enhancing IE, and sometimes fail to explore the (...) relationship between diversity and IE altogether. We claim these omissions are significant from both a practical and theoretical perspective. Moreover, we explain how the overlooked explanations suggest that epistemic benefits of diversity can depend on epistemically unjust social dynamics. (shrink)

The Good Life and the Greater Good in a Global Context brings together scholars working in the fields of the humanities and social sciences who critically examine the notion of the "good life," understood in all of its dimensions--material, psychological, moral, emotional, and spiritual--and in relation to the greater good. In so doing, the authors provide interdisciplinary insights into what the good life means today and how a viable vision of it can be achieved to benefit not just individuals but (...) our interdependent world as well. (shrink)

In this paper we distinguish two dimensions in which the reclamation of slurs can succeed (or fail). By reclamation we refer to the linguistic practice whereby certain speakers employ slurs in order to express pride, foster camaraderie, manifest solidarity, subvert extant structures of discrimination, and so on. Reclamation can succeed, we propose, in at least two senses: in terms of felicity, insofar as a certain use of a slur counts as a move within a reclamatory practice; and in terms of (...) accomplishment, insofar as it achieves the goals typically associated with reclamation. In the first part, we present the distinction between felicity and accomplishment. In the second, we show that it provides a deeper understanding of the worries and concerns to which reclamation may give rise within and outside the academic debate. This distinction thus constitutes a valuable addition to the theoretical toolkit for analyzing the phenomenon of reclamation. (shrink)

To date, COVID-19 has spread across the world, changing our way of life and forcing us to wear face masks. This report demonstrates that face masks influence the human ability to infer emotions by observing facial configurations. Specifically, a mask obstructing a face limits the ability of people of all ages to infer emotions expressed by facial features, but the difficulties associated with the mask’s use are significantly pronounced in children aged between 3 and 5 years old. These findings are (...) of essential importance, as they suggest that we live in a time that may potentially affect the development of social and emotion reasoning, and young children’s future social abilities should be monitored to assess the true impact of the use of masks. (shrink)

Acts that are considered undesirable standardly violate our expectations. In contrast, acts that count as morally desirable can either meet our expectations or exceed them. The zone in which an act can be morally desirable yet not exceed our expectations is what we call the zone of moral indifference, and it has so far been neglected. In this paper, we show that people can use positive terms in a deflated manner to refer to actions in the zone of moral indifference, (...) whereas negative terms cannot be so interpreted. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Current attempts to understand unusually high rates of psychiatric illness in complex, chronic illnesses can be guilty of operating within an explanatory framework whereby there are two options. Either (a) that the psychiatric predicaments are secondary to the bodily condition, and (b) that they are primary. In this paper, I draw upon philosophical work on affect, contemporary empirical work, and qualitative first-person patient data to illustrate a much messier reality. I argue that affective experience is generally more complex in (...) such conditions, and that a variety of pre- and post-morbid causal factors dynamically interact such that the resultant psychiatric predicaments do not permit to classification as strictly primary or secondary to the bodily condition. Affective scaffolding, in my view, provides an apt theoretical framework for capturing this nuance. (shrink)

A concept of diversity is an understanding of what makes a group diverse that may be applicable in a variety of contexts. We distinguish three diversity concepts, show that each can be found in discussions of diversity in science, and explain how they tend to be associated with distinct epistemic and ethical rationales. Yet philosophical literature on diversity among scientists has given little attention to distinct concepts of diversity. This is significant because the unappreciated existence of multiple diversity concepts can (...) generate unclarity about the meaning of “diversity,” lead to problematic inferences from empirical research, and obscure complex ethical-epistemic questions about how to define diversity in specific cases. We illustrate some ethical-epistemic implications of our proposal by reference to an example of deliberative mini-publics on human tissue biobanking. (shrink)

The development and use of large and dynamic health data repositories designed to support research pose challenges to traditional informed consent models. We used semi-structured interviewing to elicit diverse research stakeholders' views of a model of consent appropriate to participation in initiatives that entail collection, long-term storage, and undetermined future research use of multiple types of health data. We demonstrate that, when considering health data repositories, research stakeholders replace a concept of consent as informed with one in which consent is (...) engaged. In engaged consent, a participant's ongoing relationship with a repository serves as a substitute or adjunct to information exchange at enrollment. We detail research stakeholders' views of the risks of engaged consent and suggest questions for further study about engagement and consent procedures in initiatives that aim to store data for future unspecified research purposes. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the experiences of EU migrants working in UK restaurants in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. We do so through a care ethics lens, which we bring together with the integrative approach to organisational silence to consider the ethical consequences of the organisational policies of political silence adopted by the restaurant chains in our qualitative empirical study. We develop the concept of political organisational silence and probe its ethical dimensions, showing how at the organisational level (...) it falls short of constituting a practice of caring for migrant workers in politically divisive and hostile times. We argue that organisational policies of political silence emphasise the exploitative nature of the business of (im)migration, which prioritises concern for profits over care for the needs of others. Organisations refuse caring responsibility for migrant workers, leaving care to the migrants themselves and their co-workers and managers. Whilst peer-care practices partially fill this politically silent care-vacuum, this leaves individuals to negotiate difficult tensions without institutional support at a time of increased uncertainty, complexity, hostility, violence, and vulnerability. Drawing lessons from our study and its aftermath, we call for a care manifesto to inform the business of (im)migration, which would need to include caring political responsibility towards migrant workers exercised through caring political organisational voice as well as silence. (shrink)

While the value of early detection of dementia is largely agreed upon, population-based screening as a means of early detection is controversial. This controversial status means that such screening is not recommended in most national dementia plans. Some current practices, however, resemble screening but are labelled “case-finding” or “detection of cognitive impairment”. Labelled as such, they may avoid the ethical scrutiny that population-based screening may be subject to. This article examines conceptualizations of screening and case-finding. It shows how the definitions (...) and delimitations of the concepts (the _what_ of screening) are drawn into the ethical, political, and practical dimensions that screening assessment criteria or principles are intended to clarify and control (the _how_ of screening, how it is and how it should be performed). As a result, different conceptualizations of screening provide the opportunity to rethink what ethical assessments should take place: the conceptualizations have different ethico-political implications. The article argues that population-based systematic screening, population-based opportunistic screening, and case-finding should be clearly distinguished. (shrink)

Interventional research on deceased organ donors and donor organs prior to transplant holds the promise of reducing the number of patients who die waiting for an organ by expanding the pool of transplantable organs and improving transplant outcomes. However, one of the key challenges researchers face is an assumption that someone who receives an organ that was part of an interventional research protocol is always a human subject of that same study. The consequences of this assumption include the need for (...) oversight by an institutional review board and for research-level informed consent from transplant recipients, all within the complex practical realities of the organ donation and transplantation process in the United States. The current national focus on this issue provides an opportunity to think critically about the policy goals of the human subjects regulations and their application to the nascent field of deceased organ donor intervention research. We propose that for donor research where the transplant recipient does not fall under the definition of human subject, the clinical consent model—rather than the consent model used for human research subjects—best facilitates the policy objectives of balancing clinical innovation, transparency, and protection of patients in an ethically responsible and legally compliant manner. (shrink)

In this article, Palmer provides a clear survey of positions on killing domestic animals in animal shelters. She argues that there are three ways of understanding the killing that occurs in animal shelters: consequentialism, rights based, and relation based. She considers the relationship of humans and domesticated animals that leads to their killing in animal shelters as well as providing an ethical assessment of the practice.

The replicability of findings in experimental psychology can be improved by distinguishing sharply between hypothesis-generating research and hypothesis-testing research. This distinction can be achieved by preregistration, a method that has recently attracted widespread attention. Although preregistration is fair in the sense that it inoculates researchers against hindsight bias and confirmation bias, preregistration does not allow researchers to analyze the data flexibly without the analysis being demoted to exploratory. To alleviate this concern we discuss how researchers may conduct blinded analyses. As (...) with preregistration, blinded analyses break the feedback loop between the analysis plan and analysis outcome, thereby preventing cherry-picking and significance seeking. However, blinded analyses retain the flexibility to account for unexpected peculiarities in the data. We discuss different methods of blinding, offer recommendations for blinding of popular experimental designs, and introduce the design for an online blinding protocol. (shrink)

Using semiotic and historical methods, the article recovers the ancient Russian concept of ‘state’, which appeared and gained a foothold in the Russian social and cultural space in the fourteen and fifteenth centuries. In the authors’ opinions, this content has determined the basic features for understanding the State in modern post-Soviet Russian society to date. Accordingly, it is important to reassemble the main conceptual threads in the ‘state’ concept during the epoch of Ivan the Terrible, the Muscovite Tsar, the epoch (...) when the ‘state’ concept gained a foothold in Russian political culture. To re-establish the content of the ‘state’ concept, a historical description, an etymological and comparative analysis of this concept, as well as content analysis of the first epistle from Tsar Ivan the Terrible to Duke Andrei Kurbsky were employed. As a result, it was possible to recover the aspects of the ‘state’ concept that continue to be reproduced in post-Soviet Russian culture and predetermine certain elements of modern Russia’s political outlook. This concerns the central role of the ‘sovereign ruler’ in the State, the ideal of the ideological unity, the State’s mission of mediation between man and God, the hierarchy of the State and the sacral role of the ruler at the peak of this hierarchy. (shrink)

Despite the fact that they play a prominent role in everyday speech, the representation and processing of fixed expressions during language production is poorly understood. Here, we report a study investigating the processes underlying fixed expression production. “Tip-of-the-tongue” (TOT) states were elicited for well-known idioms (e.g., hit the nail on the head) and participants were asked to report any information they could regarding the content of the phrase. Participants were able to correctly report individual words for idioms that they could (...) not produce. In addition, participants produced both figurative (e.g., pretty for easy on the eye) and literal errors (e.g., hammer for hit the nail on the head) when in a TOT state, suggesting that both figurative and literal meanings are active during production. There was no effect of semantic decomposability on overall TOT incidence; however, participants recalled a greater proportion of words for decomposable rather than non-decomposable idioms. This finding suggests there may be differences in how decomposable and non-decomposable idioms are retrieved during production. (shrink)

The study conducted by Lantian et al. (2024) investigates the potential sources of moral resistance to the biomedical enhancement of romantic relationships through the use of love drugs, drawing on...

This study applied a method of assisted introspection to investigate the phenomenology of mathematical intuition arousal. The aim was to propose an essential structure for the intuitive experience of mathematics. To achieve an intersubjective comparison of different experiences, several contemporary mathematicians were interviewed in accordance with the elicitation interview method in order to collect pinpoint experiential descriptions. Data collection and analysis was then performed using steps similar to those outlined in the descriptive phenomenological method that led to a generic structure (...) that accounts for the intuition surge in the experience of mathematics which was found to have four irreducible structural moments. The interdependence of these moments shows that a perceptualist view of intuition in mathematics, as defended by Chudnoff, is relevant to the characterization of mathematical intuition. The philosophical consequences of this generic structure and its essential features are discussed in accordance with Husserl’s philosophy of ideal objects and theory of intuition. (shrink)

It is shown that for any computable field K and any r.e. degree a there is an r.e. set A of degree a and a field F ≅ K with underlying set A such that the field operations of F (including subtraction and division) are extendible to (total) recursive functions. Further, it is shown that if a and b are r.e. degrees with b ≤ a, there is a 1-1 recursive function $f: \mathbb{Q} \rightarrow \omega$ such that f(Q) ∈ a, (...) f(Z) ∈ b, and the images of the field operations of Q under f can be extended to recursive functions. (shrink)

The digital revolution has widened the array of curriculum materials available to history teachers. Given the variable quality of these new materials and the deeply contextual nature of teaching, educators need better tools for selecting among the vast options available. This study aimed to validate a device designed for that purpose, called the Curriculum Materials Evaluation Tool (CMET). Using a questionnaire and think-aloud interview, the study examined how four social studies teachers evaluated a novel material set for potential classroom use, (...) and how the CMET mediated their analysis. Findings showed that the teachers preferred when materials are readily accessible and adaptable for their specific teaching context, in contrast to “one-size-fits-all” resources that dominate the Web. The CMET appeared to foster a deeper and broader analysis of the given material set, especially regarding its political and cultural orientation. The study suggests that teachers’ role in vetting and adapting digital materials be recognized and embraced. The CMET can contribute to that end through its use in district adoption committees, teacher professional development, and collaborative curriculum research. (shrink)

This book aims to inscribe the prominent Soviet semiologist Yuri Lotman into the analysis of political forms and components of power as seen from the context of various Russian-European encounters.

Dominant agri-food systems are increasingly seen as unsustainable in terms of environmental degradation, mass production or high food waste. In an attempt to counteract these developments and foster sustainability transitions in agri-food systems, a variety of actors are engaging in socially innovative models of food production and consumption. Using a multiple case study approach, our study examines three contrasting alternative economic models in the city of Berlin: community gardens, the app Too Good To Go (TGTG), and a cooperative supermarket. Based (...) on 15 qualitative interviews, we provide insights into their transformative potential by exploring participants' underlying motivations, the changes they have experienced, and the challenges and potential for future development of these models. We find that participation in community gardens and the cooperative supermarket is similarly motivated by social aspects and dissatisfaction with existing food access options, while TGTG users are more motivated by financial reasons. Our study shows that change is experienced mainly at the individual level, e.g. by building new relationships, changing cognitive framings, and learning (new) practices, especially in community-oriented settings. The individualization of change shows that these models have a rather low potential to lead to more systemic accounts of changes. Yet, they can prefigure regime change, describe resistance, and foster cumulative incremental change that may spill over into society. We conclude that in order to sustain this role and drive transitions, it is important to up- and outscale these models; and we provide recommendations on how these models can mutually support their development, establishment, and protection. (shrink)

In this article we aim to reduce the force of the expensive tastes objection to equality of welfare by constructing a pluralist welfare egalitarian theory which is not defeated by it. In the first part, we argue that Cohen’s condition of responsibility-sensitiveness is not able to provide a satisfactory rebuttal of the expensive tastes objection for at least a class of theories of justice, namely those that adhere to a methodologically fact-sensitive view. In the second part, we explore the possibility (...) of constructing a welfare egalitarian theory that gives weight to both equality and efficiency. We propose two alternatives, which integrate a utilitarian constraint and a Weak Pareto constraint on equality and show that both theories consistently differentiate between compensable and non-compensable expensive tastes, but should ultimately be rejected because of other unattractive implications. Finally, we develop a fairness-constrained theory of welfare egalitarianism and suggest that it can distinguish between compensable and non-compensable expensive tastes in both a conceptually consistent and a morally plausible manner, without generating decisive additional objections. (shrink)

Unity and Plurality presents novel ways of thinking about plurality while casting new light on the interconnections among the logical, philosophical, and linguistic aspects of plurals. The volume brings together new work on the logic and ontology of plurality and on the semantics of plurals in natural language. Plural reference, the view that definite plurals such as 'the students' refer to several entities at once (the individual students), is an approach favoured by logicians and philosophers, who take sentences with plurals (...) ('the students gathered') not to be committed to entities beyond individuals, entities such as classes, sums, or sets. By contrast, linguistic semantics has been dominated by a singularist approach to plurals, taking the semantic value of a definite plural such as 'the students' to be a mereological sum or set. Moreover, semantics has been dominated by a particular ontological view of plurality, that of extensional mereology. This volume aims to build a bridge between the two traditions and to show the fruitfulness of nonstandard mereological approaches. A team of leading experts investigates new perspectives that arise from plural logic and non-standard mereology and explore novel applications to natural language phenomena. (shrink)

The New Alexandrian Library is to be inaugurated at the end of 1998 on the royal site of the great ancient metropolis, that is, on the site of the Museum founded by Ptolemy I to enclose his mythical collection of books. This ambitious project of a “public research library “ was undertaken on the initiative of the Egyptian government and has, since 1986, received the support of UNESCO.

This article is part of a research project guided by a methodology for the production of images by children from 2 to 6 years old, developed in the Zona da Mata, in Rondônia. Children's filmic and photographic image productions inspired this inquiry, and suggest a novel way of thinking about children, childhood and research. Based on the questions, What can children's image productions tell us in a survey carried out in periods of social isolation? and What do children’s representations tell (...) us about their lives beyond school? we trace the thematic pathways taken in their production of photographic images and short videos, following our subjects as they engender themselves through the production of images and through their verbal commentaries on those images. What can a child do with a camera in her/his hands? Observing the patterns of their image-making allowed us to enter temporalities and spatialities that suggest other ways of being in the world, particularly in a time of pandemic. What these young children communicate to us through their images and video footage is the power of experience, of traces, remnants and scraps, revealing a capacity for astonishment at things that may go unnoticed by adults. They invite us to experience other ways of seeing and relating to the world, creating other senses and sensations for research, or even for life itself. (shrink)

The objective of this research was to determine the relationship between educational marketing and student satisfaction in Higher Education Institutions in the Tacna region, in order to analyse the characteristics that are related to the study variables. The methodology was carried out under a quantitative approach, with a correlational and transversal research design; sample was composed of 249 students. Pearson's statistical test was applied, showing that the educational marketing variable is significantly related to student satisfaction in higher education institutions. Finally, (...) it was demonstrated that the students evidenced effective characteristics of their respective institutions that differentiate them from others. (shrink)

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