Adorno and Foucault are among the 20th century’s most renowned social critics but little work has been done to compare their ideas about the activity of critique. ‘Adorno, Foucault and Critique’ attempts to fill this lacuna. It takes as its starting point the Kantian legacy that informs Adorno’s and Foucault’s notions of critique, or their ‘ontologies of the present’, as Foucault calls them. Exploring the ontological foundations of critique, the article then addresses the principal objects of critique: domination and fascism. (...) It ends with a comparative account of the central aims of Adorno’s and Foucault’s critiques of western societies. (shrink)

This open access book provides original, up-to-date case studies of “ethics dumping” that were largely facilitated by loopholes in the ethics governance of low and middle-income countries. It is instructive even to experienced researchers since it provides a voice to vulnerable populations from the fore mentioned countries. Ensuring the ethical conduct of North-South collaborations in research is a process fraught with difficulties. The background conditions under which such collaborations take place include extreme differentials in available income and power, as well (...) as a past history of colonialism, while differences in culture can add a new layer of complications. In this context, up-to-date case studies of unethical conduct are essential for research ethics training. (shrink)

In “The Runabout Inference Ticket” AN Prior (1960) examines the idea that logical connectives can be given a meaning solely in virtue of the stipulation of a set of rules governing them, and thus that logical truth/consequence.

On the Dummettian understanding, anti-realism regarding a particular discourse amounts to (or at the very least, involves) a refusal to accept the determinacy of the subject matter of that discourse and a corresponding refusal to assert at least some instances of excluded middle (which can be understood as expressing this determinacy of subject matter). In short: one is an anti-realist about a discourse if and only if one accepts intuitionistic logic as correct for that discourse. On careful examination, the strongest (...) Dummettian arguments for anti-realism of this sort fail to secure intuitionistic logic as the single, correct logic for anti-realist discourses. Instead, antirealists are placed in a situation where they fail to be justified in asserting monism (that intuitionistic logic is the unique correct logic). Thus, antirealists seem forced either to accept pluralism (i.e. one or more intermediate logic is at least as `correct’ as intuitionistic logic–an option I take to be unattractive from the anti-realist perspective), or they must be anti-realists about the realism/anti-realism debate (and, in particular, must refuse to assert the instance of excluded middle equivalent to logical monism or logical pluralism). (shrink)

During the Winter of 2011 I visited SADAF and gave a series of talks based on the central chapters of my manuscript on the Yablo paradox. The following year, I visited again, and was pleased and honored to find out that Eduardo Barrio and six of his students had written ‘responses’ that addressed the claims and arguments found in the manuscript, as well as explored new directions in which to take the ideas and themes found there. These comments reflect my (...) thoughts on these responses (also collected in this issue), as well as my thoughts on further issues that arose during the symposium that was based on the papers and during the many hours I spent talking and working with Eduardo and his students. Durante el invierno de 2011, visité SADAF y dí una serie de conferencias sobre los capítulos centrales de mi manuscrito sobre la paradoja de Yablo. El año siguiente, visité Buenos aires nuevamente y tuve el placer y el honor de descubrir que Eduardo Barrio y seis de sus estudiantes habían escrito respuestas que abordan las afirmaciones y argumentos de mi manuscrito, además de explorar nuevas direcciones en las cuales considerar las ideas y temas encontrados allí. El presente trabajo refleja mis pensamientos sobre estas respuestas (también incluidas en este volumen), así como mis ideas sobre otras cuestiones que surgieron durante el simposio en el que se presentaron los artículos y en las muchas horas que nosotros discutimos y trabajamos con Eduardo y sus estudiantes. (shrink)

The article explores the character of Adorno’s materialism while fleshing out his Marxist-inspired idea of natural history. Adorno offers a non-reductionist and non-dualistic account of the relationship between matter and mind, human history and natural history. Emerging from nature and remaining tied to it, the human mind is nonetheless qualitatively distinct from nature owing to its limited independence from it. Yet, just as human history is always also natural history, because human beings can never completely dissociate themselves from the natural (...) world, nature is inextricably entwined with human history. Owing to the entwinement of mind and matter, humanity and nature, a version of dialectical materialism can be found in Adorno’s work. Key Words: body • dialectics • Hegel • history • idealism • Marx • materialism • mind • nature • Timpanaro. (shrink)

Which famous twentieth-century philosopher instigated a revolution in philosophy, arguing that the philosopher’s business is not to advance general theories about reality, but rather to help release our thinking from the intellectual cramps produced by a misunderstanding of the forms of language? Wittgenstein? Wrong! according to John W. Cook. This revolution in philosophy actually had no author. Apparently, it arose through a misinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s later writings. In fact, Cook implies, Wittgenstein himself was not genuinely engaged in a (...) struggle with philosophical puzzles, but rather had an ontological theory up his sleeve: he was a conventional empiricist in the tradition of Berkeley, Ernst Mach, and Russell, though he happened to express himself so obscurely that some philosophers, believing themselves inspired by his writings, dreamed up the whole revolution by mistake, as it were. However, Cook is not arguing that the revolution should be canceled; rather he looks at Wittgenstein’s work from the standpoint of that accidental revolution, berating Wittgenstein, as it were, for not having thought to be a Wittgensteinian himself. (shrink)

Achieving equity in international research is a pressing concern. Exploitation in any scenario, whether of human research participants, institutions, local communities, animals or the environment, raises the overarching question of how to avoid such exploitation. Agreed principles can be universally applied to research in any discipline or geographical area, whatever methodologies are employed. This chapter introduces a collection of case studies, presenting a range of up-to-date examples of exploitation in North-South research collaborations, in order to raise awareness of ethics dumping.

Hospital ethics committees have evolved as a response to complicated legal, ethical, and social dilemmas that accompany modern medicine. In the United States, their growth has been augmented by Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards and the Patient Self-Determination Act. There appears to be an implicit presumption that all clinical ethics consultation practices are relatively similar. Finally, there is heightened awareness of the needs for quality standards and assessment of the outcomes of ethics consultations.

Misinformation can have significant societal consequences. For example, misinformation about climate change has confused the public and stalled support for mitigation policies. When people lack the expertise and skill to evaluate the science behind a claim, they typically rely on heuristics such as substituting judgment about something complex (i.e. climate science) with judgment about something simple (i.e. the character of people who speak about climate science) and are therefore vulnerable to misleading information. Inoculation theory offers one approach to effectively neutralize (...) the influence of misinformation. Typically, inoculations convey resistance by providing people with information that counters misinformation. In contrast, we propose inoculating against misinformation by explaining the fallacious reasoning within misleading denialist claims. We offer a strategy based on critical thinking methods to analyse and detect poor reasoning within denialist claims. This strategy includes detailing argument structure, determining the truth of the premises, and checking for validity, hidden premises, or ambiguous language. Focusing on argument structure also facilitates the identification of reasoning fallacies by locating them in the reasoning process. Because this reason-based form of inoculation is based on general critical thinking methods, it offers the distinct advantage of being accessible to those who lack expertise in climate science. We applied this approach to 42 common denialist claims and find that they all demonstrate fallacious reasoning and fail to refute the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic global warming. This comprehensive deconstruction and refutation of the most common denialist claims about climate change is designed to act as a resource for communicators and educators who teach climate science and/or critical thinking. (shrink)

Angiogenesis, the generation of new blood vessels from pre‐existing vessels, is an integral component of wound healing, responses to inflammation and other physiologic processes. It is also an essential part of tumor growth; in the absence of new vessel formation, tumors cannot expand beyond a small volume. Although much is known about angiogenesis and its regulation, there is no overall theory that describes or explains this process. It is here suggested that the intracrine hypothesis, which ascribes to certain extracellular signaling (...) peptides (whether hormones, growth factors, DNA‐binding proteins or enzymes) a role in both intracellular biology and extracellular signaling, can contribute to a more general understanding of angiogenesis. Intracrine factors participate in angiogenesis in the following ways: (1) they can act within the cells that synthesized them (type I intracrine action), (2) they can be secreted and then taken up by their cell of synthesis to act intracellularly (type II intracrine action ), or (3) they can be secreted and internalized by a distant target cell (type III intracrine action). The parallels between the intracrine growth factor mechanisms cancer cells employ in stimulating their own growth and the mechanisms operative in endothelial cell proliferation during angiogenesis (“intracrine reciprocity”) are discussed. Collectively, these explorations lead to testable hypotheses regarding the regulation of normal and pathological angiogenesis, and point to similarities between tumor‐induced angiogenesis and tissue differentiation. BioEssays 28: 943–953, 2006. © 2006 Wiley periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ : Dans son récent recueil d’articles Language, Truth and History, Donald Davidson semble pencher en faveur d’une philosophie du langage mettant l’accent sur la notion de l’intention communicative du sujet parlant; en quoi il se rapproche du point de vue de Paul Grice. Si cela est juste, la pensée de Davidson se serait dégagée de l’approche sémantique formelle qu’il soutenait dans ses Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Dans cet article, je soutiens que, bien qu’il y ait beaucoup de similitudes (...) entre ces deux penseurs, Davidson n’a pas abandonné ses précédentes vues sur le langage. (shrink)

Spinoza shared with his contemporaries the conviction that the passions are, on the whole, unruly and destructive. A life of virtue requires that the passions be controlled, if not entirely vanquished, and the preferred means of imposing this control over the passions is via the power of reason. But there was little agreement in the seventeenth century about just what gives reason its strength and how its power can be brought to bear upon the wayward passions.

Achieving equity in international research is one of the pressing concerns of the twenty-first century. In this era of progressive globalization, there are many opportunities for the deliberate or accidental export of unethical research practices from high-income regions to low- and middle-income countries and emerging economies. The export of unethical practices, termed “ethics dumping,” may occur through all forms of research and can affect individuals, communities, countries, animals, and the environment. Ethics dumping may be the result of purposeful exploitation but (...) often arises from lack of awareness of good ethical and governance practice. This chapter describes the work of the TRUST project toward counteracting the practice of ethics dumping through the development of tools for the improvement of research governance structures. Multi-stakeholder consultation informs all of TRUST’s developments. Most importantly, this gives voice to marginalized vulnerable groups and indigenous people, who have been equal and active partners throughout the project. At the heart of the TRUST project is an ambitious aim to develop a Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings. Uniquely, the Code provides guidance across all research disciplines in clear, short statements, focusing on research collaborations that entail considerable imbalances of power, resources and knowledge and using a new framework based on the values of fairness, respect, care, and honesty. The code was recently adopted by the European Commission as a reference document for Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe. (shrink)

Stewart Shapiro and Alan Weir have argued that a crucial part of the demonstration of Frege's Theorem (specifically, that Hume's Principle implies that there are infinitely many objects) fails if the Neo-logicist cannot assume the existence of the empty property, i.e., is restricted to so-called Aristotelian Logic. Nevertheless, even in the context of Aristotelian Logic, Hume's Principle implies much of the content of Peano Arithmetic. In addition, their results do not constitute an objection to Neo-logicism so much as a clarification (...) regarding the view of logic that the Neo-logicist must take. (shrink)

The Serbian Orthodox Church has been described in scholarship as having had a significant impact onto the social and political life of Serbia, especially since the wars of the nineties. With the coming of the age of the Internet and social science automation, however, more options have gradually become available to researchers in the recent years. For this reason, this article will tackle the official rhetoric of the Serbian Orthodox Church in relation to the sociopolitical with the assistance of social (...) science automation. Forming an examination via the methodological lens of Operational Code Analysis, this article delves into the Church’s discourse on Kosovo, via heavy vetting of all official statements given on the website of the Serbian Orthodox Church. It also expands upon the initial methodology – Operational Code Analysis – to an analysis of an institution with a uniform discourse, which has so far not seen light in scholarly production. (shrink)

This chapter opens with a discussion on the mechanics of canon in the Star Wars universe. The practice of dividing a fiction into canonical and noncanonical parts is not merely an exercise in fanboy/girl esoterica. Once a fiction is massive enough, and the Star Wars fiction is certainly quite massive, the canon/noncanon divide can play a practical role in pointing to which portions of the story are required knowledge for understanding and interpreting the overall universe. Canon/noncanon distinctions make massive fictions (...) like Star Wars accessible. A particular work will not be eternally canonical or eternally noncanonical. The canon/noncanon divide does not merely tell us that some stories count as genuine parts of the Star Wars fiction while others do not. It also dictates which version of a particular story counts as genuine when there are multiple versions from which to choose. (shrink)