A working party of academics from both professional safeguarding backgrounds and research backgrounds developed and wrote ethical guidelines on safeguarding children in research on behalf of their faculty research ethics committee. The working party encountered a lack of useful precedents while developing the guidelines leading to a lengthy process of debate and consideration of the issues. This paper explores the various issues and dilemmas arising during this process, particularly the tension between safeguarding children from abuse and maintaining research confidentiality. One (...) of the main areas of discussion was how to establish the limits of confidentiality without compromising the research in hand. The role and responsibilities of researchers in supporting children's welfare, and the development of procedures for ensuring that safeguarding is effective are discussed as key elements. In addition, the issues researchers may face when determining thresholds for intervention are considered alongside the uncertainties created by considerations of the extent to which children can give informed consent in research contexts. The paper reflects the process of considering these issues and the conclusions the working party drew as to how best to support children's welfare during research. It also outlines the key elements of the guidelines and the structures developed to ensure researchers could get advice if suspected child abuse became an issue in their research. The paper includes a short version of the guidelines which were eventually approved across the Higher Education Institute. (shrink)

Caroline New is an energetic activist who has interpolated critical realist ideas into the front-line of political activism. In this wide-ranging interview, she begins by reflecting on her life and how she became a realist and her account is illustrated with personal anecdotes recalling memories of well-known philosophers and activists from the time. She discusses how her position set her apart from other feminists and she examines the interacting threads of longstanding debates on the political left, as well as (...) longstanding debates within critical realist circles, such as the relative importance of quantitative methods in social research and the scope for agency as a source of intentional change. Finally she brings some of her ideas to bear on contemporary issues. This engaging interview notably provides some of the social context in which critical realism developed, while also pointing towards its future potential. (shrink)

Climate Change and the Moral Agent examines the moral foundations of climate change and makes a case for collective action on climate change by appealing to moralized collective self-interest, collective ability to aid, and an expanded understanding of collective responsibility for harm.

Liberalism faces a tension between its commitment to minimal interference with individual liberty and the urgent need for strong collective action on global climate change. This paper attempts to resolve that tension. It does so on the one hand by defending an expanded model of collective moral responsibility, according to which a set of individuals can be responsible, qua ?putative group?, for harm resulting from the predictable aggregation of their individual acts. On the other, it defends a collectivized version of (...) the harm principle. The claim is that the collectivized principle pushes the burden of argument, against coercively enforced measures to curtail climate change and compensate its victims, onto the global elite collectively responsible for environmental harms. Some such potential arguments are briefly considered and rejected. (shrink)

However far we are from either in practice, basic global and intergenerational justice, including climate change mitigation, are taken to be theoretically compatible. If population grows as predicted, this could cease to be the case. This paper asks whether that tragic legacy can now be averted without hard or even tragic choices on population policy. Current generations must navigate between: a high-stakes gamble on undeveloped technology; violating human rights; demanding unbearable sacrifices of the already badly off; institutional unfairness across adults; (...) institutional unfairness across children; failing to protect children’s basic interests; and threatening the autonomy of the family. We are not yet forced to choose between bequeathing a tragic choice and making one, by adopting basically unjust measures. However, even the remaining options present a morally hard choice. The fact we face it is yet another damning indictment on the combined actions and collective failures of the global elite. (shrink)

Ce compte rendu a déjà paru dans Territoire en mouvement – Revue de géographie et aménagement [En ligne], 34 | 2017. Luc Gwiazdzinski, La ville 24 heures sur 24, Paris, Rhuthmos, 2016, 254 p. Cet ouvrage présente les nouvelles relations de la ville au temps, ou comment la ville évolue en fonction de notre nouvelle occupation du temps. C'est une approche complexe qui est présentée ici, au travers des visions et analyses de spécialistes de différents domaines, mais qui tous ont (...) un lien - Recensions. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum has expanded the capabilities approach to defend positive duties of justice to individuals who fall below Rawls’ standard for fully cooperating members of society, including sentient nonhuman animals. Building on this, David Schlosberg has defended the extension of capabilities justice not only to individual animals but also to entire species and ecosystems. This is an attractive vision: a happy marriage of social, environmental and ecological justice, which also respects the claims of individual animals. This paper asks whether it (...) is one that the capabilities approach can really deliver. Serious obstacles are highlighted. The potential for conflict between the capability-based entitlements of humans and those of nonhuman animals or ‘nature’ is noted, but it is argued that this does not constitute a decisive objection to the expanded capabilities approach. However, intra-nature conflicts are so widespread as to do so: the situation is outside the circumstances of justice as they are standardly understood. Schlosberg attempts to reconcile such conflicts by re-examining what it means to flourish as a sentient nonhuman animal. This fails, because of the distinction between flourishing as a species, which often requires predation, and flourishing as an individual, which is as frequently incompatible with it. Finally, the paper considers how a capabilities theorist might move beyond such conflicts, identifying two possible strategies (which are not themselves unproblematic) for reconciling the demands of humans, animals and ecosystems. (shrink)

We claim that a moral obligation to take climate leadership by means of unilateral mitigation depends on the existence of a plausible follow-the-leader mechanism whereby unilateral mitigation by some increases the probability of sufficient mitigation by others to avert catastrophic climate impacts. By understanding these mechanisms, we can better articulate the obligation for climate leadership across various sectors, from government to individual actors, in the fight against climate change. [Open access].

This article argues that parents have a special, shared duty to organize for collective action on climate change mitigation and adaptation, but not for the reason one might assume. The apparently obvious reason is that climate change threatens life, health and community for the next generation, and parents have a special duty to their children to protect their basic human interests. This argument fails because many parents could protect their children from these central harms without taking more general action to (...) combat climate change, let alone to mitigate it. Instead, subtler reasons are advanced, drawing on children’s relational interests or on their interests as moral agents. It is argued that parents owe it to their children to combat climate change because of the indirect impact on current children of serious threats to their children and grandchildren, and of being required to live in a radically unjust world. It is further argued that parents may owe it directly to their more distant descendants to mitigate climate change because of the role current parents played in bringing them into the world. (shrink)

The historian Caroline Walker Bynum, who solicited and organized this set of five case studies, explains in her introduction to them that their intent is to bypass the currently popular and unsupported claim that the humanities have practical relevance and, instead, to offer ruminative descriptions of what happens when teachers and students meet to discuss texts and objects. She explains that the essays report in detail on five individual classes in five very different academic settings, in the hope of (...) helping to turn the international anglophone conversation about humanistic education away from utilitarian, presentist, all-inclusive claims and toward a demonstration of what the humanities do in practice. (shrink)

Als wahrscheinlich älteste vollständige Überlieferung des Buddhismus reflektiert der Pali-Kanon in literarisch-narrativer Form die Auseinandersetzung mit religiös,Anderen' aus emischer Perspektive. Die Suttas berichten nicht nur, wie der Buddha Mitglieder seines Ordens belehrt, sondern auch, wie er Vertretern anderer religiöser Gruppierungen begegnet und mit ihnen diskutiert haben soll. Caroline Widmer untersucht, inwiefern in diesen Begegnungen religiöse Abgrenzung im Sinne eines Otherings literarisch dargestellt wird, und behandelt diese religionswissenschaftliche Fragestellung im Bereich des Buddhismus erstmals durch eine literaturwissenschaftlich angelegte Analyse der narrativen (...) Gestaltung der Pali-Suttas. Die Texte spiegeln jedoch nicht wie oftmals angenommen in erster Linie Toleranz oder Offenheit gegenüber anderen religiösen Ansichten wider; vielmehr sind durch einen hohen Grad an Selbstdarstellung und einem exklusiven Anspruch auf Wahrheitsbesitz geprägt. Erzählerisch wird diese Spannung so aufgelöst, dass der,Andere' das,Eigene' annimmt und dadurch seine,Andersheit' verliert. Die Untersuchung eröffnet einen neuen Zugang zu religionsgeschichtlichen Quellen, erlaubt detaillierte Einblicke in diesen systemspezifischen Prozess des Selfings und erläutert seine Funktion innerhalb der buddhistischen Überlieferung. (shrink)

_A provocative reassessment of the concept of an American golden age of European-born reason and intellectual curiosity in the years following the Revolutionary War_ The accepted myth of the “American Enlightenment” suggests that the rejection of monarchy and establishment of a new republic in the United States in the eighteenth century was the realization of utopian philosophies born in the intellectual salons of Europe and radiating outward to the New World. In this revelatory work, Stanford historian Caroline Winterer argues (...) that a national mythology of a unitary, patriotic era of enlightenment in America was created during the Cold War to act as a shield against the threat of totalitarianism, and that Americans followed many paths toward political, religious, scientific, and artistic enlightenment in the 1700s that were influenced by European models in more complex ways than commonly thought. Winterer’s book strips away our modern inventions of the American national past, exploring which of our ideas and ideals are truly rooted in the eighteenth century and which are inventions and mystifications of more recent times. (shrink)

Having a child is one of the highest-carbon decisions made by affluent individuals. Does this uncomfortable fact mean they should limit biological family size? This salient question also forces attention to two key issues. One is just how demanding individual climate justice duties are. The other is the danger of ‘ivory tower’ reasoning by privileged philosophers. On some topics, it is imperative carefully to integrate philosophical discussion with sociological and psychological research. Assuming individual climate justice duties include cutting one's carbon (...) impact, the discussion goes as follows. Should affluent couples and individuals have no biological children, because of the carbon cost? Not unless emissions-cutting duties are extremely demanding, or we make dangerous, generalised socio-psychological assumptions. Is there any individual duty to consider carbon impact when determining family size? Yes, because individual emissions-cutting duties are more than trivially demanding. Should all duty-bearers ‘stop at’ some fixed maximum number of biological kids? Not unless that number is one and we are prepared to accept very demanding individual emissions-cutting duties and make problematic sociological assumptions. Finally, the article outlines three further individual duties following from the ‘uncomfortable fact’: to raise good climate citizens, become activists, and cut the family carbon footprint. (shrink)

Bisher ist die Rolle von Ethikkomitees und Ethikberatenden als Ressource im Umgang mit der Covid-19-Pandemie ungeklärt. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird diskutiert, worin spezifische Herausforderungen bei der ethischen Bewertung von Fragen an Ethikkomitees im Pandemiekontext bestehen und welche möglichen Aufgaben für Ethikberatende identifiziert werden könnten. Dabei wird die Ansicht vertreten, dass es für die kompetente, professionelle Bearbeitung dieser Fragen hilfreich wäre, das theoretische Grundverständnis der Ethikberatung für den Pandemiekontext zu reflektieren, die begründungstheoretischen, normativen Argumente aktueller Publikationen und Stellungnahmen der Fachgesellschaften zu (...) diskutieren und Weiterbildungspotenzial sowie Kompetenzgrenzen zu identifizieren. Für werden zur Kompetenzerweiterung Public-Health-Ethik und Ethik der Menschenrechte vorgeschlagen, psychische Entlastung bei ‚moralischem Stress‘ wird als ethisch-psychologischer Kooperationsbereich diskutiert und die explizite Abgrenzung vom juristischen Bereich wird empfohlen. Ethikberatung könnte den konstruktiven Umgang mit ethischen Fragen im Pandemiekontext fördern, die Qualität von Entscheidungs- und Bewertungsprozessen verbessern und in der Versorgungspraxis pragmatische, konkrete Hilfestellung anbieten. (shrink)

This paper builds on existing research investigating CSR and ethical consumption within luxury contexts, and makes several contributions to the literature. First, it addresses existing knowledge gaps by exploring the ways in which consumers perform ethical luxury purchases of fine jewellery through interpretive research. Second, the paper is the first to examine such issues of consumer ethics by extending the application of theories of practice to a luxury product context, and by building on Magaudda’s :15–36, 2011) circuit of practice framework. (...) This is significant in that, to date, consumer research using practice theories has focused mainly on routine and habitual practices. Our findings and discussion provide an analysis of intentional and less intentional ethical consumer performances within the interconnected nexus of activities of consumers’ fine jewellery consumption practice, where meanings, understandings and intelligibility of social phenomena are worked through the various activities that shape such a practice. Finally, the paper concludes with significant managerial and policy-related implications, as our extended circuit of practice analysis conveys that if ethics and sustainability dimensions are to be embedded in fine jewellery consumption practice, they must first be made an intrinsic part of the nexus of the social and material environment of trading and consumption places. (shrink)

Engineers encounter difficult ethical problems in their practice and in research. In many ways, these problems are like design problems: they are complex, often ill-defined; resolving them involves an iterative process of analysis and synthesis; and there can be more than one acceptable solution. This book offers a real-world, problem-centered approach to engineering ethics, using a rich collection of open-ended scenarios and case studies to develop skill in recognizing and addressing ethical issues.

A cause is proportional to its effect when, roughly speaking, it is at the right level of detail. There is a lively debate about whether proportionality is a necessary condition for causation. One of the main arguments against a proportionality constraint on causation is that many ordinary and seemingly perfectly acceptable causal claims cite causes that are not proportional to their effects. In this paper, I suggest that proponents of a proportionality constraint can respond to this objection by developing an (...) idea that is present in Yablo’s early work on proportionality, but which has strangely been ignored by both Yablo and others in the subsequent debate. My suggestion is that proportionality—and, indeed, causation itself—is relative to a domain of events. At the metaphysical level, this means that the causal relation has an extra relatum—namely, a domain of events. At the level of language, it introduces a new way in which causal claims are context-sensitive: what is expressed by a causal claim depends on the contextually relevant domain of events. As I argue, this suggestion allows us to accommodate the truth of ordinary causal claims while extending the explanatory benefits of a proportionality constraint. (shrink)

Psychologists say a measure has construct validity when it, in fact, measures the construct it is intended to measure. Construct validity is both an important notion in psychological research methods and the source of much confusion and debate among psychologists. I argue that this confusion arises, in part, because of a failure to distinguish between construct validity, a feature of measures relative to a construct, and construct legitimacy, a feature of the construct itself. I propose a prescriptive account of construct (...) validity on the basis of this distinction, then provide evidence for my account through two examples from research psychology. (shrink)

Solving actual moral problems is not simply a matter of choosing the “best” of several possible responses. It is also a matter of devising possible responses. Design practice in engineering affords important lessons about addressing practical problems.

Izates, Helena, and Monobazos of Adiabene: A Study on Literary Traditions and History. By Michal Marciak. Philippika, vol. 66. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014. Pp. 316, illus. €62.

Parkinson´s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor symptoms following dopaminergic depletion in the substantia nigra. Besides motor impairments however, several non-motor detriments can have the potential to considerably impact subjectively perceived quality of life in patients. Particularly emotion recognition of facial expressions has been shown to be affected in PD, and especially the perception of negative emotions like fear, anger or disgust is impaired. While emotion processing generally refers to automatic implicit as well as conscious explicit processing, (...) the focus of most previous studies in PD was on explicit recognition of emotions only, while largely ignoring implicit processing deficits. Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) is widely accepted as therapeutic measure in the treatment of PD and has been shown to advantageously influence motor problems. Among various concomitant non-motor effects of STN-DBS, modulation of facial emotion recognition under subthalamic stimulation has been investigated in previous studies with rather heterogeneous results. While there seems to be consensus regarding the processing of disgust which significantly deteriorates under STN stimulation, findings concerning emotions like fear or happiness report heterogeneous data and seem to depend on various experimental settings and measurements. In the present review, we summarized previous investigations focusing on STN-DBS influence on recognition of facial emotional expressions in patients suffering from PD. In a first step, we provide a synopsis of disturbances and problems in facial emotion processing observed in patients with PD. Secondly, we present findings of STN-DBS influence on facial emotion recognition and especially highlight different impacts of stimulation on implicit and explicit emotional processing. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 5, Page 44-45, September–October 2022.

Human population growth, along with technological development and levels of consumption, is a key driver of our devastating impact on the environment. This must be acknowledged as a matter of urgency. Otherwise, we risk bequeathing future generations a tragic choice between introducing explicitly impermissible coercive population policies, becoming incapable of securing even basic human rights, and worsening climate change and other environmental damage. However, this chapter warns against approaching questions of population from too narrow an environmental ethics viewpoint. If this (...) debate is conducted in isolation from considerations of global justice, there is a real danger of advocating policies that are plausible on the surface but impermissible when assessed in terms of their implicit impact on individual human lives. (shrink)

In vertebrates, single cell analyses of replication timing patterns brought to light a very well controlled program suggesting a tight regulation on initiation sites. Mapping of replication origins with different methods has revealed discrete preferential sites, enriched in promoters and potential G‐quadruplex motifs, which can aggregate into initiation zones spanning several tens of kilobases (kb). Another characteristic of replication origins is a nucleosome‐free region (NFR). A modified yeast strain containing a humanized origin recognition complex (ORC) fires new origins at NFRs (...) revealing their regulatory role. In cooperation with NFRs, the histone variant H2A.Z facilitates ORC loading through di‐methylation of lysine 20 of histone H4. Recent studies using genome editing methods show that efficient initiation sites associated with transcriptional activity can synergize over several tens of kb by establishing physical contacts and lead to the formation of early domains of DNA replication demonstrating a co‐regulation between replication initiation and transcription. (shrink)

Cher, T-Pain, Saez, Châton, Booba, Benjamin Biolay, Bon Iver, Yung Beef, Lady Gaga, Neil Young ou encore PNL, tous ces artistes ont en commun l’usage de l’Auto-Tune. Ce dernier désigne un logiciel permettant d’ajuster, de corriger la voix à la suite d’un enregistrement ou durant une performance. Si initialement, l’Auto-Tune permet de chanter juste, cela est également utilisé pour produire des modulations sonores donnant un caractère artificiel, robotique, non linéaire à la voix humaine. Le premier titre avec une présence marquée (...) de l’Auto-Tune est « Believe » de Cher sorti en 1998 qui connaît un succès retentissant. Depuis, si quelques artistes – à l’image de Jay-Z et son titre D.O.A. pour « Death of Auto-Tune » (2009) – dénoncent cette pratique, l’Auto-Tune a conquis l’industrie musicale et serait utilisé dans la quasi-totalité des productions (Reynolds, 2019), toutes les esthétiques confondues. Malgré cette diffusion, encore peu de recherches académiques abordent cette question. Quels sont les enjeux liés à l’Auto-Tune? (shrink)