Although the use of the cluster randomized trial (CRT) design to evaluate vaccines, public health interventions or health systems is increasing, the ethical issues posed by the design are not adequately addressed, especially in low- and middle-income country settings (LMICs). To help reveal ethical challenges, qualitative interviews were conducted with key stakeholders experienced in designing and conducting two selected CRTs in Malawi. The 18 interviewed stakeholders included investigators, clinicians, nurses, data management personnel and community workers who were invited to share (...) their experiences related to implementation of CRTs. Data analysis revealed five major themes with ethical implications: (1) The moral obligation for health care providers to participate in health research and its compensation; (2) Suboptimal care services compromising the integrity of CRT; (3) Ensuring scientific validity and withholding care service; (4) Obtaining valid consent and permission for waiver of consent; and (5) Inadequate risk assessment for trial participation. Understanding key ethical issues posed by CRTs in Malawi could improve ethical review and research oversight of this particular study design. (shrink)

Infinite time register machines (ITRMs) are register machines which act on natural numbers and which are allowed to run for arbitrarily many ordinal steps. Successor steps are determined by standard register machine commands. At limit times register contents are defined by appropriate limit operations. In this paper, we examine the ITRMs introduced by the third and fourth author (Koepke and Miller in Logic and Theory of Algorithms LNCS, pp. 306–315, 2008), where a register content at a limit time is set (...) to the lim inf of previous register contents if that limit is finite; otherwise the register is reset to 0. The theory of these machines has several similarities to the infinite time Turing machines (ITTMs) of Hamkins and Lewis. The machines can decide all ${\Pi^1_1}$ sets, yet are strictly weaker than ITTMs. As in the ITTM situation, we introduce a notion of ITRM-clockable ordinals corresponding to the running times of computations. These form a transitive initial segment of the ordinals. Furthermore we prove a Lost Melody theorem: there is a real r such that there is a program P that halts on the empty input for all oracle contents and outputs 1 iff the oracle number is r, but no program can decide for every natural number n whether or not ${n \in r}$ with the empty oracle. In an earlier paper, the third author considered another type of machines where registers were not reset at infinite lim inf’s and he called them infinite time register machines. Because the resetting machines correspond much better to ITTMs we hold that in future the resetting register machines should be called ITRMs. (shrink)

This book questions what sovereignty looks like when it is de-ontologised; when the nothingness at the heart of claims to sovereignty is unmasked and laid bare. Drawing on critical thinkers in political theology, such as Schmitt, Agamben, Nancy, Blanchot, Paulhan, The Politics of Nothing asks what happens to the political when considered in the frame of the productive potential of the nothing? The answers are framed in terms of the deep intellectual histories at our disposal for considering these fundamental questions, (...) carving out trajectories inspired by, for example, Peter Lombard, Shakespeare and Spinoza. This book offers a series of sensitive and creative reflections that suggest the possibilities offered by thinking through sovereignty via the frame of nihilism. This book was originally published as a special issue of Culture, Theory and Critique. (shrink)

Over two decades ago, Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) raised theoretical concerns associated with traditional, reductionist, and mechanistic perspectives of movement coordination and skill acquisition for sport scientists interested in practical applications for training designs. These seminal papers advocated an emerging consciousness grounded in an ecological approach, signaling the need for sports practitioners to appreciate the constraints-led, deeply entangled, and non-linear reciprocity between the organism (performer), task, and environment subsystems. Over two decades later, the areas of (...) skill acquisition, practice and training design, performance analysis and preparation, and talent development in sport science have never been so vibrant in terms of theoretical modeling, knowledge generation and innovation, and technological deployment. Viewed at an ecological level of analysis, the work of sports practitioners has progressively transitioned toward the facilitation of an evolving relationship between an organism (athlete and team) and its environment (sports competition). This commentary sets out to explore how these original ideas from Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) have been advanced through the theoretical lens of ecological dynamics. Concurrently, we provide case study exemplars, from applied practice in high-performance sports organizations, to illustrate how these contemporary perspectives are shaping the work of sports practitioners (sport ecology designers) in practice and in performance preparation. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 64 Heft: 6 Seiten: 894-924.

This paper addresses the question of why democracy is desirable in terms of a relational theory of democracy. The theory draws on concepts from Aristotelian, critical realist, and psychoanalytic theory. From Aristotle it takes the concepts of human flourishing and human virtues; from critical realism it takes the concepts of relational subjects and relational goods; from psychoanalysis it takes the concept of mutuality. The relational theory argues that democracy, particularly deliberative democracy, is desirable because it requires and facilitates the development (...) of citizens with the relational capacity of mutuality. The theory is developed sequentially in the following four theses. (1) The function of government is to promote the flourishing of its citizens. (2) Human flourishing results from citizens having access to relational goods. (3) Access to relational goods requires that citizens possess the relational capacity of mutuality. (4) Deliberative democracy is desirable because it both requires and facilitates mutuality. (shrink)

It is argued that the tensed theory of the creative subject provides a natural formulation of the logic underlying Brouwer's notion of unextendable order and explains the link between that notion and virtual order. The tensed theory of the creative subject is also shown to be a useful tool for interpreting recent evidence about the stages of Brouwer's thinking concerning these two notions of order.

Volume Six of the Six-Volume set, Rights and Duties joins the most significant writings in two crucial areas of ethical reflection and behavior. This collection provides students and scholars with the history of how humanity has argued for and against entitlements, rights, and protections for itself, and how humanity has argued for and against obligations, duties, and social responsibilities toward others.

Libertarians often portray the decision to use enhancement technologies purely as a matter of individual choice, affecting the person who uses them but no one else. Yet individual choices often add up to large social changes that profoundly affect the lives of other people, effectively pushing individual choices in a particular direction. It seems plausible that self-reinforcing loops such as those that have driven the adoption of technologies like cars and air-conditioners might also play a role in the adoption of (...) enhancement technologies, effectively exerting pressure on people to use a technology that they might otherwise resist. (shrink)

2. That experiential statements must be unquestionably certain cannot be shown by reference to actual instances: Any sentence purporting to describe experiential data may conceivably be a lie or involve inadvertent misuse of language. Hence, experiential statements that are certain play, at best, the role of hypothetical elements in a logical reconstruction of knowledge. The assumption of such incorrigible elements is not necessary.