We have witnessed, and in some instance from afar, disasters of all sorts that span the globe from the Caribbean, South and North America, Asia, to Australia and other affected regions of the world. Some of these destabilizing and at times fatal events have resulted in lives lost, forced migration, and a restructuring of the physical, social and economic architecture of the affected parts of the globe. Further, the disasters as massive restructuring of the physical and psychological status quo are (...) at times human made and at others, natural. (shrink)

This book introduces and explores a theory of global development ethics, revealing some of the challenges to projects of global development and including coverage of core topics such as immigration, technology, famine, race and capitalism. It is ideal for advanced-level courses in Global Ethics, Development Ethics and Applied Ethics.

The environment and sociopolitical contexts in which we dwell shape our approach to the world. Islands, following Pádraig Ó Tuama, trigger an openness to other persons and sites. They fuel the comity of their inhabitants, motivate their interconnection with others, and thus sharpen their sense of morality. The Caribbean islands, and the Americas writ large, are also sites of both genocide and of a novel way to embrace the world. The peoples of the Caribbean islands have used the predicaments of (...) isolation, displacement, and genocide to initiate a mode of living that is best articulated, in the contemporary period, through the concept of créolization. The authors considered in this essay have expanded our understanding of the créolization. They have made specific the experiential thread of resilience that undergirds the meaning of créolization. In Condé’s work, the resilience is highlighted through the individual writer’s creativity. Sealy, for her part, expands the meaning of créolization to model a prospective inclusionary polity in the form of a créolizing nation. As we know, nations are not isolated entities; they are part of a conglomeration with other nations. Getachew completes the study to show that the cosmopolitan world that we might aspire to reach can benefit from the post-World War II efforts of Caribbean and African postcolonial nations. In truth, we realize with these authors that a moral and equitable international environment has been the articulated goal of Caribbean peoples since arguably the sixteenth century. It is a goal consonant with all of the perennial humanist ideals of modernity. (shrink)

The contributors argue that the Westphalian influence on international relations has blinded the analysis that would awaken our awareness of the increasing erosion of state boundaries. It has in effect retarded our recognition of the common condition we share.

Cases of intervention in international affairs are often thought justifiable if the intervention is exercised against rogue political leaders and delinquent nation-states. The author offers an argument for the inclusion of an increasingly ubiquitous international agent, the profit generating corporation. This done, the paper argues that a cosmopolitan ethics of responsibility is an attractive mode of evaluation that renders corporations accountable in the international environment. This ethics of responsibility is applied to the particular case of British/Dutch Shell, Inc., in Nigeria (...) to argue the merits of international intervention. (shrink)

This paper explores Charles Taylor’s conception of an inclusive liberal polity. It argues that contemporary immigration challenges even Taylor’s inclusive liberalism by revealing that liberalism is inherently exclusionary and that the exclusionary tendency reinforces liberalism’s peculiar ability to cultivate refugees at both the national and transnational levels.

Is it possible for the Modern State to function without violence? How is violence ingrained in national identities, and how do the borders that supposedly “protect” nations actually foster unconscious biases, the anger and hatred of “others,” and the racism and ethnocentrism of shootings, mass murders, and other atrocities? Eddy M. Souffrant and the contributing authors of A Future without Borders? provide insights into how to answer these and other questions.

Griffiths et al. have proposed a quantitative measure of causal specificity and used it to assess various attempts to single out genetic causes as being causally more specific than other cellular mechanisms, for example, alternative splicing. Focusing in particular on developmental processes, they have identified a number of important challenges for this project. In this discussion note, I would like to show how these challenges can be met.

Résumé Cet article se propose d’examiner comment la notion de « culture de guerre », avancée par certains historiens pour qualifier l’engagement des intellectuels français dans l’Union sacrée contre l’Allemagne dès 1914, se décline dans le cas de Durkheim. À travers l’exemple de son texte de propagande le plus connu : L’Allemagne au-dessus de tout, on se propose de débusquer les arguments sociologiques plus ou moins implicites qu’il mobilise pour dénoncer la « mentalité allemande ». Il en résulte qu’au regard (...) de sa vision de l’évolution des sociétés, la conception du rôle de l’État défendue par l’Allemagne en guerre doit être comprise comme une régression, un « retour vers le primitif », donc comme une énigme sociologique impensée et impensable dans la logique rationaliste qui était la sienne. (shrink)

Going back at least to Duhem, there is a tradition of thinking that crucial experiments are impossible in science. I analyse Duhem's arguments and show that they are based on the excessively strong assumption that only deductive reasoning is permissible in experimental science. This opens the possibility that some principle of inductive inference could provide a sufficient reason for preferring one among a group of hypotheses on the basis of an appropriately controlled experiment. To be sure, there are analogues to (...) Duhem's problems that pertain to inductive inference. Using a famous experiment from the history of molecular biology as an example, I show that an experimentalist version of inference to the best explanation (IBE) does a better job in handling these problems than other accounts of scientific inference. Furthermore, I introduce a concept of experimental mechanism and show that it can guide inferences from data within an IBE-based framework for induction. 1. Introduction2. Duhem on the Logic of Crucial Experiments3. ‘The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology’4. Why Not Simple Elimination?5. Severe Testing6. An Experimentalist Version of IBE 6.1. Physiological and experimental mechanisms6.2. Explaining the data6.3. IBE and the problem of untested auxiliaries6.4. IBE-turtles all the way down7. Van Fraassen's ‘Bad Lot’ Argument8. IBE and Bayesianism9. Conclusions. (shrink)

It can be assumed that value judgements, which are needed to judge what is ‘good’ or ‘better’ and what is ‘bad’ or ‘worse’, are involved in every decision-making process. The theoretical understanding and analysis of value judgements is, therefore, important in the context of bioethics, for example, to be able to ethically assess real decision-making processes in biomedical practice and make recommendations for improvements. However, real decision-making processes and the value judgements inherent in them must first be investigated empirically (‘empirical (...) bioethics’). For this to succeed, what exactly a ‘value judgement’ is and of what components it might consist must initially be theoretically clarified. A corresponding conceptual model can then support or even enable empirical data collection and analysis and, above all, subsequent ethical analysis and evaluation. This paper, therefore, presents a value judgement model with its theoretical derivation. It also illustrates its application in an interview study of decision-making between animal experimentation and alternative methods in the context of biomedical research. Though the model itself can be theoretically deepened and extended, the application of the model works in general and helps to uncover what value judgements can enter into decision-making. However, the empirical methods, for example, qualitative interviews, can also be better oriented towards eliciting value judgements (as understood according to the model). Further applications of the model to other topics or by means of other empirical methods are conceivable. (shrink)

In this chapter, we discuss a specific kind of progress in economics, namely, progress that is pushed by the repeated use of mathematical models in most sub-branches of economics today. We adopt a functional account of progress to argue that progress in economics occurs via the use of what we call ‘common recipes’ and the use of model templates to define and solve problems of relevance for economists. We support our argument by discussing the case of twentieth-century business cycle research. (...) By presenting this case study in detail, we show how model templates are not only re-applied to different phenomena. We also show how scientists come up with them in the first place and how – once they are considered less useful – they are replaced with new ones. Finally, our case also illustrates that it is not only the mathematical structure that is re-used but that such a re-use also requires a shared conceptual vision of core properties of the phenomenon. If that vision is not shared anymore among economists, a model template can become useless and has to be replaced – sometimes through overcoming resistance – with a different one. (shrink)

Rosa Luxemburg a fondé le Parti communiste d’Allemagne (KPD) dans l’hiver 1918-1919. Peu de temps après, elle était assassinée. Elle fut ensuite largement célébrée au sein du parti. Néanmoins, ses idées touchant la praxis politique du KPD ont donné lieu à de vifs débats – en particulier sa conception de la “realpolitik révolutionnaire”. Dès le congrès de foundation du parti, on a assisté à des affrontements sur les questions de la cooperation avec les sociaux-démocrates, de l’engagement dans les syndicats, et (...) de la participation aux élections legislatives – une aile gauche influente rejetant les trois. Ces conflits perdurèrent tout au long de l’année 1919. Le leader du parti, Paul Lévi, se voyait lui-même comme le gardien de l’héritage politique de Rosa Luxemburg, qu’il ne parvint à préserver qu’au prix d’une scission du parti. Cet article suit le développement du KPD dans la première année qui suivit la mort de Luxemburg, et cherche à éclairer le lien entre les différentes positions présentes au sein du parti et la praxis de l’organisation. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

A comparison between the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Notes on the Correct Way to present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching in the Roman Catholic Church by the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, demonstrates the seriousness of the Cathechism's effort to take into account Jewish selfdefinition. Jesus' positive attitude to the Law, sabbath and Temple are rightly stressed. The Cathechism has not succeeded however in integrating these new insights into a coherent theology, which explains (...) the occurrence of elements of the theology of substitution next to affirmations of the lasting significance of Judaism within salvation history. Added to this there is a total lack of references to Judaism in history until today. The absence of the tragic events in the Middle Ages, of the persecution of the Jews, of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, of the Shoah and of the founding of the State of Israel, fosters the image of Judaism as no longer relevant after Biblical times. Earlier Vatican documents had stressed the importance of exactly these points for catechesis. After the evaluation of the Catechism's contents the article continues with evaluating its form. Two important elements within the Jewish idea of permanent education seem to be lacking in the Catechism: the connection between religion and daily life and the emphasis on differences of opinion as a fruitful means of educating religion. The connection between religion and daily life is prevented by the Catechism's exclusively theological language. In addition to that the Catechism is meant primarily for bishops. The Catechism itself admits that further 'adaptation' is needed in order to develop a genuine catechism. The Catechism's rather dogmatic and apodictic style does not invite to further discussion and to fruitful debate. However, nothing prevents believing Catholics to read the Catechism that way and to enrich Catholic tradition by 'adapting' and debating its contents. (shrink)