First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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Wilson and colleagues (Wilson et al. 2019) argue that an intersectional approach to the clinical encounter can facilitate trust and understanding between patients and clinicians. An intersectional...

It is generally accepted that the development of the modern sciences is rooted in experiment. Yet for a long time, experimentation did not occupy a prominent role, neither in philosophy nor in history of science. With the ‘practical turn’ in studying the sciences and their history, this has begun to change. This paper is concerned with systems and cultures of experimentation and the consistencies that are generated within such systems and cultures. The first part of the paper exposes the forms (...) of historical and structural coherence that characterize the experimental exploration of epistemic objects. In the second part, a particular experimental culture in the life sciences is briefly described as an example. A survey will be given of what it means and what it takes to analyze biological functions in the test tube. (shrink)

Beyond what Colman is suggesting, some residual indeterminacy of Nash equilibrium may remain even after individual rationality is amended. Although alternative solution concepts can expand the positive scope of game theory, they tend to reduce its accuracy of predictions. Moreover, the appeal of alternative solutions may be context-specific, as illustrated by the Stackelberg solution.

In the children's book ``The Phantom Tollbooth'' by Norton Juster one can find the following passage:``Yes, please,'' said Milo. ``Can you show me the biggest number there is?''.

The discourse on freedom that Kant unfolds in his writings on the history of philosophy, especially in his essay Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent (1784), is a constitutive component of the moral perspective whose key concept is the notion of freedom. This is why critical philosophy, as Kant says, has its own “chiliastic expectation”, and the critical philosopher is a prophet who himself “occasions und produces the events he predicts”. Questions concerning the proper use of freedom – (...) how does freedom position itself in the individual ethics of each person when he/she wants to act morally, how does it position the community in legal ethics when it merges in a liberal state through the peacemaking function of the law, or how does the community of states position itself in international law when, with cosmopolitan intent, freedom devotes itself to a utopian peace mission – these are always questions concerning the concept of freedom which has emerged from a critical process of arbitration. (shrink)

In this study, the impacts of two different “methods” for teaching ethics as part of the religious education in the Swedish upper secondary school were compared by means of a non-randomized controlled trial in two parts, involving 542 students. The question was which “method” had the greatest capacity to generate long-term ethical awareness in the students. The intervention condition consisted of students whose teachers were instructed to teach according to the Three Step Model, a teaching method influenced by research concerning (...) how moral autonomy and ethical awareness could be increased by means of instruction and training. The control condition consisted of students whose teachers were instructed to teach basically as usual but with some added guidelines. During the trial, all students were given a pre-test before the ethics section had started and a post-test 10–12 weeks after it was finished. When quantified and summarized, the results showed an advantage of the intervention condition in measure B but an advantage of the control condition in measure A ; however, the advantage of the intervention condition was clearer and stronger. Even though the intervention students did not experience a stronger development, they appeared to have learned significantly more, not least in terms of procedural knowledge in ethical problem solving. The tentative conclusion is therefore that the Three Step Model is a more effective method for increasing ethical awareness, at least if one defines ethical awareness and measures it the way it was done in this study. (shrink)

A theory from the behavioral and social sciences is presented from the structuralist point of view. A more comprehensive theory-net is outlined, some basic terms and core assumptions are formulated, and an expansion of the theory towards two intended applications is given. Finally, some results of a first empirical test of the theory are reported. The aim of the paper is to show that the structuralist account of scientific theories is not confined to mathematical theories from the natural sciences, but (...) can also be applied to relatively informal constructions of the behavioral and social sciences. (shrink)

The article calls into question the role assigned to human rights in the defense of the supposedly legitimate process of globalization, particularly for the juridification of freedom, insofar as natural law and liberal traditions render human beings into rightsbearing persons. It seeks thus to unmask the universalization of moral principles, which ultimately pays lip service to a logic of economic, geopolitical, and cultural domination.

About the relationship of the two traditions of Platonic interpretation the indirect and the direct traditions, the written dialogues and the unwritten doctrines.

People judge positive information to be more alike than negative information. This good-bad asymmetry in similarity was argued to constitute a true property of the information ecology (Alves, H., Koch, A., & Unkelbach, C. (2017). Why good is more alike than bad: Processing implications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21, 69–79). Alternatively, the asymmetry may constitute a processing outcome itself, namely an influence of phasic affect on information processing. Because no research has yet tested whether phasic affect influences perceived similarity among (...) stimuli, we conducted 5 Experiments that also tested whether phasic affect can account for the higher judged similarity among positive compared to negative stimuli. In three experiments, we affectively charged pictures of different Pokemon by pairing them with monetary gains and losses (Exp. 1a, 1b) as well as positive and negative trait words (Exp. 2); yet, the evaluative charge did not differentially influence perceived similarity among the Pokemon. Experiment 3 replicated the basic similarity asymmetry among positive and negative words, and found that it was unaffected by externally induced phasic affect. Experiment 4 showed that phasic affect had no influence on perceived similarity of non-evaluative words either. We conclude that albeit a weak influence of phasic affect on perceived similarity of stimuli cannot be ruled out entirely, it can most likely not account for the typically medium to large sized asymmetry in similarity among positive and negative stimuli. (shrink)

Some of the recent criticisms published during and after the last revision process of the Declaration of Helsinki are directed at its basic legitimacy. In this article we want to have a closer look at the two criticisms we consider to be the most fundamental. The first criticism questions the legitimate authorship of the World Medical Association to publish a document such as the Declaration. The second fundamental criticism we want to examine argues that the last revision process failed to (...) meet the standards for fair, democratic procedures. Although both criticisms deny the formal legitimacy of the Declaration in the most fundamental way, they have never been addressed in detail in a single article. We refute most of the related arguments. However, acknowledging some of the points made, improvements for future revision processes and versions of the Declaration of Helsinki are outlined. (shrink)

It was not long ago when the consciousness was not considered a problem for science. However, this has now changed and the problem of consciousness is considered the greatest challenge to science. In the last decade, a great number of books and articles have been published in the field, but very few have focused on the how consciousness evolves and develops, and what characterizes the transitions between different conscious states, in animals and humans. This book addresses these questions. Renowned researchers (...) from different fields of science (including neurobiology, evolutionary biology, ethology, cognitive science, computational neuroscience and philosophy) contribute with their results and theories in this book, making it a unique collection of the state-of-the-art of this young field of consciousness studies. - First book on the topic - Focus on different levels of consciousness, including: Evolutionary, developmental, and functional - Highly interdisciplinary. (shrink)

Belief in the benevolence of free markets has become a fundamental credo of professional experts, economists, business people and politicians. We regard this discourse as part of a new culture of markets, which has also taken root in Southeast Asia. Expanding markets and using high-tech devices of communication are interpreted as cultural systems that are used in the construction of modernity. An `unbridled romanticism of productivity' (Baudrillard) and a `romance of capitalism' are the meta-narratives underlying the culture of markets. This (...) theme is followed up on two empirical levels. The development policy of three Southeast Asian governments, namely Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, is briefly characterized as market corporatism, market socialism and high-tech developmentalism. We then focus on the emergence of the new middle classes, their actual and symbolic consumption and their lifestyles. Finally the decline of real markets, the creation of virtual markets and the state of postmodernity in Southeast Asia are discussed. We conclude that market fundamentalism and postmodern lifestyles characterize the beginning rather than the end of modernity in Southeast Asia. (shrink)