The Institutional Review Board is a committee of the institution responsible for carrying out the institution's responsibilities for the protection of human research subjects. Since it is a local committee, most of the complaints about the IRB can be resolved locally provided it is borne in mind that the IRB is the champion not only of the human research subject but also of the investigator. National or regional cooperative research protocols present problems that are not insurmountable.

A new picture is emerging from the last hundred years’ study of evolution. Mountains of data to support—or bury—perspective are available, and there have been some substantial, recent summative works. Darlington in particular is recognized not only for comprehensiveness and insight, but for wit and clarity as well. Dobzhansky has done a rather lucid summary in nontechnical language, and Rensch has constructed a monument of documentation and intricate interpretation. Nevertheless, the picture of evolution has changed far more drastically than most (...) professionals can grasp without thoroughly digesting and independently interpreting a host of summative literature. The war-of-all-against-all, which is still evolution for the layman, has long since given away to the ecologist’s community with its various kinds of relationships. Therefore, the concept of “Biological Expansion” is now felt to be a more adequate frame of reference. (shrink)

Recent regulatory interventions are beginning to mandate climate disclosure in listed firms. Although compelling, prior studies demonstrate that firms can symbolically commit to climate and environmental disclosures yet not undertake action. Neo-institutional theory (NIT) suggests that two strategies exist: the legitimacy perspective, which manifests in symbolic efforts, and the efficiency perspective, which is more consistent with substantive efforts. In this article, we apply NIT to assess the climate transition efforts in large, publicly traded firms in five countries with similar regulatory (...) and economic profiles (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States). We gauge climate efforts by membership in corporate climate initiatives (CCIs) and the integration of climate action plans (CAPs). Of the eight CCIs and three CAPs investigated, we find that only two CCIs and one CAP help to improve emissions performance. The majority of firms in our sample, therefore, demonstrate the legitimacy perspective of NIT. (shrink)

The Malabo Declaration places the transformation of agriculture and food systems at the centre of regional and national policy priorities across Africa. Transformative change in the way that food is produced, processed and consumed is seen as not only necessary for addressing the complex challenges of food security and poverty alleviation, but also as a driver of new employment opportunities and economic development. As pointed out within the recent UN Food Systems Summit, essential elements of food system transformations include digital (...) transitions and the empowerment of women and youth. However, there are few empirical examples demonstrating how these agendas come together to affect food system change. Here we focus on an enterprising group of young farmers referred to as Malawi’s _new achikumbe elite_, who are urban based, educated and engaging in agriculture on a commercial basis. The aim is to characterise this emergent group of agriculturalists and to understand the role that they have within the transformation of Malawi-s agricultural sector. We explore how digital platforms are supporting the emergence of this new category of farmer and positioning young people as agents of change in food systems transformation. Based on interviews and ethnographic research with 32 young farmers between 2018 and 2022 combined with interviews with representatives of service providers and agricultural organisations, we argue that this group is characterised by a higher level of education, self-dependency and use of digital platforms, enabling them to adapt their context to sourcing production resources and engaging in commercial agriculture. We present evidence that digital platforms are supporting the new achikumbe elite (NAE) to engage flexibly with new commercial markets, contracts and access a wider range of training and advice. However, while digital platforms can offer more equitable access to information and market opportunities, they also represent potential avenues for food system transformations that are inequitable. As such, we argue that there is need for digital technologies to mitigate against potential inequalities. (shrink)

While Nietzsche's works and ideas are relevant across the many branches of philosophy, the themes of contest and conflict have been mostly overlooked. Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche's Philosophy redresses this situation, arguing for the importance of these issues throughout Nietzsche's work. The volume has three key lines of inquiry: Nietzsche's ontology of conflict; Nietzsche's conception of the agon; and Nietzsche's warrior-philosophy. Under these three umbrellas is a collection of insightful and provocative essays considering, among other topics, Nietzsche's understanding of (...) resistance; his engagement with classical thinkers alongside his contemporaries, including Jacob Burckhardt; his views on language, metaphor and aphorism; and war, revolt and terror. In bringing together such topics, Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche's Philosophy seeks to correct the one-sided tendencies within the existing literature to read simply 'hard' and 'soft' analyses of conflict. Written by scholars across the Anglophone and the European traditions, within and beyond philosophy, this collection emphasises the entire problematic of conflict in Nietzsche's thought and its relation to his philosophical and literary practice. (shrink)

This essay examines some ethical aspects of stalkingincidents in cyberspace. Particular attention is focused on the Amy Boyer/Liam Youens case of cyberstalking, which has raised a number of controversial ethical questions. We limit our analysis to three issues involving this particular case. First, we suggest that the privacy of stalking victims is threatened because of the unrestricted access to on-linepersonal information, including on-line public records, currently available to stalkers. Second, we consider issues involving moral responsibility and legal liability for Internet (...) service providers (ISPs) when stalking crimesoccur in their `space' on the Internet. Finally, we examine issues of moral responsibility for ordinary Internet users to determine whether they are obligated to inform persons whom they discover to be the targets of cyberstalkers. (shrink)

This essay expands upon an earlier work in which we analyzed the implications of the Verizon v RIAA case for P2P Networks vis-à-vis concerns affecting personal privacy and intellectual property. In the present essay we revisit some of the concerns surrounding this case by analyzing the intellectual property and privacy issues that emerged in the MGM Studios v. Grokster case. These two cases illustrate some of the key tensions that exist between privacy and property interests in cyberspace. In our analysis, (...) we contrast Digital Rights Management and Interoperability and we examine some newer distribution models of sharing over P2P networks. We also analyze some privacy implications in the two cases in light of the theory of privacy as contextual integrity. (shrink)

Because the propaganda model challenges basic premises and suggests that the media serve antidemocratic ends, it is commonly excluded from mainstream debates on media bias. Such debates typically include conservatives, who criticize the media for excessive liberalism and an adversarial stance toward government and business, and centrists and liberals, who deny the charge of adversarialism and contend that the media behave fairly and responsibly. The exclusion of the propaganda model perspective is noteworthy, for one reason, because that perspective is consistent (...) with long standing and widely held elite views that 'the masses are notoriously short-sighted' (Bailey 1948: 13) and are 'often poor judges of their own interests' (Lasswell 1933: 527), so that 'our statesmen must deceive them' (Bailey 1948: 13); and they 'can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality' (Walter Lippmann 1921: 310). In Lippmann's view, the 'manufacture of consent' by an elite class had already become 'a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government' by the 1920s (Lippman 1921: 248). (shrink)

The two statements quoted above bring out some central features of modern Latin America. A close study of recent trends including the specific totalitarian ideology of the generals, the system of ideological manipulation and terror, the diaspora, and the defensive response of the churches (and their harassment by the military juntas) reveals startling similarities with patterns of thought and behavior under European fascism, especially under Nazism. Fascist ideology has flowed into Latin American directly and indirectly. Large numbers of Nazi refugees (...) came to Latin America during and after World War II, and important ingredients of fascist ideology have been indirectly routed into that area through the U.S. military and intelligence establishment. Whatever the source, however, it has met a need of the local and foreign elites that dominate the area, and has been modified to meet their special requirements. (shrink)

" The primary U.S. goal in the Third World is to ensure that it remains open to U.S. economic penetration and political control. Failing this the United States exerts every effort to..

Nietzsche's strengths as a critic are widely acknowledged, but his peculiar style of critique is usually ignored as rhetoric, or dismissed as violent or simply incoherent. In this book, Nietzsche's concept of the agon or Wettkampf, a measured and productive form of conflict inspired by ancient Greek culture, is advanced as the dynamic and organising principle of his philosophical practice, enabling us to make sense of his critical confrontations and the much disputed concept of transvaluation or Umwertung. Agonal perspectives are (...) cast on a number of key problems in his thought across a broad range of texts. Topics and problems treated include: critical history and the need for a limit in the negation of the past; Nietzsche contra Socrates and the problem of closure; Nietzsche contra humanism and the problem of humanity; Nietzsche contra Kant on genius and legislation; the problem of self-legislation in relation to life and temporality; Nietzsche's sense of community in its articulation with law, and the normativity of taste; ressentiment and the question of therapy in Nietzsche and Freud; and the problem of total affirmation in relation to critique. (shrink)

This study – the first full-length monograph in English on the subject – discusses the genesis of Theodor Lessing’s philosophy of history as mainly expressed in his books _Geschichte als Sinngebung des Sinnlosen_ (1919 and 1927), as well as its philosophical implications.

The Moral Habitat offers a new and systematic interpretation of Kant's moral and political philosophy. Herman introduces the idea of a moral habitat to examines the dynamic system of duties that exists between individuals and civic institutions.

Thomas Scanlon and Derek Parfit have recently defended a meta-ethical view that is supposed to satisfy realistic intuitions about morality, without the metaphysical implications that many find hard to accept in other realist views. Both philosophers argue that truths in the normative domain do not have ontological implications, while truths in the scientific domain presuppose a metaphysical reality. What distinguishes Scanlon and Parfit’s approach from other realistic meta-ethical theories is that they maintain that normative entities exist in a way that (...) is different from (some) non-normative entities. Moreover, they think that this view about the way normative entities exist helps to answer the metaphysical worries that are often thought to plague non-naturalism. To make sense of this idea, I develop their view as a version of alethic pluralism: the position that there is more than one truth property. I argue, however, that when their view is developed in this way it fails to satisfy realistic intuitions about morality. This shows that on a plausible and initially promising reading of what it takes for a normative entity to exist in a way that is different from non-normative entities, Parfit’s and Scanlon’s non-metaphysical moral realism fails to be more realistic than contemporary versions of anti-realism. (shrink)

This volume collects ten essays investigating some fundamental aspects of Kant's ethics, drawing wider conclusions for moral philosophy. Herman aims to undermine some received ideas about how Kantian ethics works and what it means in practice.

In this paper, we examine some ethical implications of a controversial court decision in the United States involving Verizon (an Internet Service Provider or ISP) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In particular, we analyze the impacts this decision has for personal privacy and intellectual property. We begin with a brief description of the controversies and rulings in this case. This is followed by a look at some of the challenges that peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, used to share digital (...) information, pose for our legal and moral systems. We then examine the concept of privacy to better understand how the privacy of Internet users participating in P2P file-sharing practices is threatened under certain interpretations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States. In particular, we examine the implications of this act for a new form of “panoptic surveillance” that can be carried out by organizations such as the RIAA. We next consider the tension between privacy and property-right interests that emerges in the Verizon case, and we examine a model proposed by Jessica Litman for distributing information over the Internet in a way that respects both privacy and property rights. We conclude by arguing that in the Verizon case, we should presume in favor of privacy as the default position, and we defend the view that a presumption should be made in favor of sharing (rather than hoarding) digital information. We also conclude that in the Verizon case, a presumption in favor of property would have undesirable effects and would further legitimize the commodification of digital information – a recent trend that is reinforced by certain interpretations of the DMCA on the part of lawmakers and by aggressive tactics used by the RIAA. (shrink)

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. If we don't know what the words 'democracy' and 'democratic' mean, then we don't know what democracy is. This book defends a radical view: these words mean nothing and should be abandoned. The argument for Abolitionism is simple: those terms are defective (...) and we can easily do better, so let's get rid of them. According to the abolitionist, the switch to alternative devices would be a significant communicative, cognitive, and political advance. The first part of the book presents a general theory of abandonment: the conditions under which language should be abandoned. The rest of the book applies this general theory to the case of 'democracy' and 'democratic'. Cappelen shows that 'democracy' and 'democratic' are semantically, pragmatically, and communicatively defective. Abolitionism is not all gloom and doom. It also contains a message of good cheer: we have easy access to conceptual devices that are more effective than 'democracy'. We can do better. These alternative linguistic devices will enable us to ask better questions, provide genuinely fruitful answers, and have more rational discussions. Moreover, those questions and answers better articulate the communicative and cognitive aims of those who use empty terms like 'democracy' and 'democratic'. (shrink)

The survival of the personal copy of Commentary on the Mishnah by Maimonides, which he revised throughout his life, provides an unparalleled window into the ways he continually reconsidered legal and conceptual questions. This manuscript covers five of the six orders of the Mishnah and contains countless corrections and emendations, the vast majority in the author’s own hand. This article argues that Maimonides’s intense interest in solving problems related to the enumeration of the commandments, which he addresses at length in (...) Book of the Commandments and, to a lesser extent, Mishneh Torah, led him to make a number of emendations to his Commentary and to rethink other aspects of his work. That is, when writing Book of the Commandments and Mishneh Torah in the decade after completing his Commentary, Maimonides tackled, and sometimes even concocted, questions that he had no reason to consider in the latter work. This study traces two ways that Maimonides’s later works diverge from his earlier ones, in the meaning of Hebrew and Arabic technical terms and in increased attention to scripture in determing Jewish law, revealing a great medieval mind “in perpetual motion.”. (shrink)

Philosophers take a great deal of interest in the study of meaning, reference, truth and other semantic properties, but remarkably little attention has been paid to the entities that have semantic properties. The view that’s typically taken for granted has two closely related components.

Herman J. Saatkamp’s _A Life of Scholarship with Santayana: Essays and Reflections_ gathers together his work of a lifetime. There are twenty-three pieces, in three sections: “Santayana and Philosophy,” “Editorship,” and “Genetic Concerns and the Future of Philosophy.”.

Language Turned on Itself examines what happens when language becomes self-reflexive; when language is used to talk about language. Those who think, talk, and write about language are habitual users of various metalinguistic devices, but reliance on these devices begins early: kids are told, 'That's called a "rabbit"'. It's not implausible that a primitive capacity for the meta-linguistic kicks in at the beginning stages of language acquisition. But no matter when or how frequently these devices are invoked, one thing is (...) clear: they present theorists of language with a complex data pattern. Herman Cappelen and Ernest Lepore show that the study of these devices and patterns not only represents an interesting and neglected project in the philosophy of language, but also carries important consequences for other parts of philosophy. Part I is devoted to presenting data about various aspects of our metalinguistic practices. In Part II, the authors examine and reject the four leading metalinguistic theories, and offer a new account of our use of quotation in a variety of different contexts. But the primary goal of this book is not to promote one theory over another. Rather, it is to present a deeply puzzling set of problems and explain their significance. (shrink)