Research in the field of Empirical Ethics (EE) uses a broad variety of empirical methodologies, such as surveys, interviews and observation, developed in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Whereas these empirical disciplines see themselves as purely descriptive, EE also aims at normative reflection. Currently there is literature about the quality of empirical research in ethics, but little or no reflection on specific methodological aspects that must be considered when conducting interdisciplinary empirical ethics. Furthermore, poor methodology in an EE (...) study results in misleading ethical analyses, evaluations or recommendations. This not only deprives the study of scientific and social value, but also risks ethical misjudgement. (shrink)

Although there has been some growing recognition of the role of private actors in international environmental regimes, little attention has been paid to the role of the private sector at the science–policy interface. Because the automobile industry plays a crucial role in mitigation of greenhouse gases, successful policy requires not just the assent but the active cooperation of this sector. Such cooperation, however, requires some institutional acceptance that climate change is indeed a significant risk. In this article, the authors look (...) at the early stages of the automobile industry’s engagement with the discourse on climate change. The authors focus, in particular, on the role of corporate scientists in two U.S. automobile companies in translating this discourse. Acting as boundary spanners and institutional entrepreneurs, these individuals influenced both corporate perceptions of and responses to climate change science. (shrink)

This paper examines a number of questions about the degree to which the clinical practice of medicine is affected, if at all, by the legal systems in four countries: Chile, Germany, Japan and the United States. The focus on these four countries in four different regions of the world offers a unique perspective within which to examine medical treatment decisions made by patients and their proxies or surrogates, the potential role for universal written instruments such as advance directives, the cross-professional (...) tensions between clinical and legal concerns in very distinct cultures, and the degree to which legal activities can change or affect clinical realities in the context of these different political and health care systems. We have incorporated, whenever relevant, the insights of many disciplines, including the social sciences, in analyzing the existing interrelations between law and behavior in this specific context. Der Beitrag untersucht, inwieweit die klinische Praxis in vier Ländern mit unterschiedlichen Rechtssystemen und Berufskulturen durch Rechtsnormen oder das Verständnis von Recht beeinflußt wird. Es wird gefragt, welche Funktion rechtliche Interventionen bei der Veränderung von Verhaltensnormen in unterschiedlichen Gesundheitssystemen haben können. Folgende Themenbereiche werden diskutiert: Entscheidungen über die medizinische Behandlung, die von Patienten und ihren Angehörigen oder Stellvertretern getroffen werden; die mögliche Rolle umfassender schriftlicher Verfügungen wie z.B. der Patiententestamente ; die berufsübergreifenden Spannungen zwischen medizinischen und rechtlichen Belangen in sehr unterschiedlichen Kulturen; der Einfluß, den gesetzgeberische Aktivitäten im Kontext der verschiedenen politischen und Gesundheitssysteme auf die medizinische Wirklichkeit haben. Bei ihrer Analyse der in diesem Zusammenhang bestehenden Beziehungen im Verhältnis von Recht und Verhalten haben die Autoren die Erkenntnisse vieler Disziplinen unter Einschluß der Sozialwissenschaften, soweit sie als relevant erscheinen, in ihren Beitrag eingearbeitet. (shrink)

Pendant l’été 2012, les artistes Ellen Rothenberg et Délia Popa participèrent à un projet d’échange culturel avec une famille rom vivant dans une petite communauté agraire du comté de Sibiu, vieille région de Transylvanie. Le deuxième volet de ce projet comprenait une exposition des œuvres inspirées par cette expérience, dans les Galeries d’Art Contemporain du Musée National de Brukenthal, à l’automne 2013. Intitulée « Chelen Amenca (Danse avec nous) », cette exposition fut organisée par la c...

Le 'Dictionaire historique et critique' de Pierre Bayle est depuis longtemps considéré comme un des ouvrages clés qui a non seulement effectué une influence importante à l'époque de sa parution, mais aussi sur le siècle des Lumières par la suite. Le présent ouvrage examine, dans un premier temps, le dictionnaire en tant que genre littéraire et fait ressortir les particularités du 'Dictionaire historique et critique.' Dans un deuxième temps, on s'intéresse à la question de savoir comment des aspects formels du (...) texte baylien permettent à l'auteur de propager des argumentations sceptiques. Par ce moyen, le rapport entre la forme et le contenu devient visible. Dans un troisième temps, on s'interroge au même rapport entre la forme et le contenu mais en considérant la dimension historiographique de Pierre Bayle. Par cette étude, il devient possible de montrer que l'auteur se munit de différents outils de travail intellectuel pour faire part de sa pensée en choisissant le dictionnaire comme genre pour son texte."--Page 4 of printed paper wrapper. (shrink)

Disclosure of financial interests in scientific research is the centerpiece of the new conflict of interest regulations issued by the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Science Foundation that became effective October 1, 1995. Several scientific journals have also established financial disclosure requirements for contributors. This paper measures the frequency of selected financial interests held among authors of certain types of scientific publications and assesses disclosure practices of authors. We examined 1105 university authors (first and last cited) from Massachusetts (...) institutions whose 789 articles, published in 1992, appeared in 14 scientific and medical journals. (shrink)

This study examines the extent to which scientific and biomedical journals have adopted conflict of interest (COI) policies for authors, and whether the adoption and content of such policies leads to the publishing of authors’ financial interest disclosure statements by such journals. In particular, it reports the results of a survey of journal editors about their practices regarding COI disclosures. About 16 percent of 1396 highly ranked scientific and biomedical journals had COI policies in effect during 1997. Less than 1 (...) percent of the articles published during that year in the journals with COI policies contained any disclosures of author personal financial interests while nearly 66 percent of the journals had zero disclosures of author personal financial interests. Nearly three fourths of journal editors surveyed usually publish author disclosure statements suggesting that low rates of personal financial disclosures are either a result of low rates of author financial interest in the subject matter of their publications or poor compliance by authors to the journals’ COI policies. (shrink)

The paper, drawing on articles by J. M. E. McTaggart, G. E. Moore, D. Davidson, J. L. Austin, B. Russell, A. J. Ayer and G. E. M. Anscombe, argues that the philosophy of language in the analytic tradition has developed an “inchoative“ view of time, and history is a problem as regards the existence of events in the past and how these events can be known. An alternative view is hinted at through the work of L. Wittgenstein and S. Cavell.

In _The Excessive Subject: A New Theory of Social Change_, Molly Anne Rothenberg uncovers an innovative theory of social change implicit in the writings of radical social theorists, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj?i?ek. Through case studies of these writers' work, Rothenberg illuminates how this new theory calls into question currently accepted views of social practices, subject formation, democratic interaction, hegemony, political solidarity, revolutionary acts, and the ethics of alterity. Finding a common dissatisfaction (...) with the dominant paradigms of social structures in the authors she discusses, Rothenberg goes on to show that each of these thinkers makes use of Lacan's investigations of the causality of subjectivity in an effort to find an alternative paradigm. Labeling this paradigm 'extimate causality', Rothenberg demonstrates how it produces a nondeterminacy, so that every subject bears some excess; paradoxically, this excess is what structures the social field itself. Whilst other theories of social change, subject formation, and political alliance invariably conceive of the elimination of this excess as necessary to their projects, the theory of extimate causality makes clear that it is ineradicable. To imagine otherwise is to be held hostage to a politics of fantasy. As she examines the importance as well as the limitations of theories that put extimate causality to work, Rothenberg reveals how the excess of the subject promises a new theory of social change. By bringing these prominent thinkers together for the first time in one volume, this landmark text will be sure to ignite debate among scholars in the field, as well as being an indispensable tool for students. (shrink)

By Jerome Rothenberg. Contributions by Steven Clay, Rodney Phillips.

By Jerome Rothenberg. Contributions by Steven Clay.

: Feminist legal theory provides a healthy skepticism toward legal doctrine and insists that we reexamine even formally gender-neutral rules to uncover problematic assumptions behind them. The article first outlines feminist legal theory from the perspectives of liberal, cultural, and radical feminism. Examples of how each theory influences legal practice, case law, and legislation are highlighted. Each perspective is then applied to a contemporary bioethical issue, egg donation. Following a brief discussion of the common themes shared by feminist jurisprudence, the (...) article incorporates a narrative reflecting on the integration of the common feminist themes in the context of the passage of the Maryland Health Care Decisions Act. The article concludes that gender does matter and that an understanding of feminist legal theory and practice will enrich the analysis of contemporary bioethical issues. (shrink)

In _The Excessive Subject: A New Theory of Social Change_, Molly Anne Rothenberg uncovers an innovative theory of social change implicit in the writings of radical social theorists, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj?i?ek. Through case studies of these writers' work, Rothenberg illuminates how this new theory calls into question currently accepted views of social practices, subject formation, democratic interaction, hegemony, political solidarity, revolutionary acts, and the ethics of alterity. Finding a common dissatisfaction (...) with the dominant paradigms of social structures in the authors she discusses, Rothenberg goes on to show that each of these thinkers makes use of Lacan's investigations of the causality of subjectivity in an effort to find an alternative paradigm. Labeling this paradigm 'extimate causality', Rothenberg demonstrates how it produces a nondeterminacy, so that every subject bears some excess; paradoxically, this excess is what structures the social field itself. Whilst other theories of social change, subject formation, and political alliance invariably conceive of the elimination of this excess as necessary to their projects, the theory of extimate causality makes clear that it is ineradicable. To imagine otherwise is to be held hostage to a politics of fantasy. As she examines the importance as well as the limitations of theories that put extimate causality to work, Rothenberg reveals how the excess of the subject promises a new theory of social change. By bringing these prominent thinkers together for the first time in one volume, this landmark text will be sure to ignite debate among scholars in the field, as well as being an indispensable tool for students. (shrink)

This is the compelling story of one of the most fascinating thinkers of the twentieth century- a richly toned portrait of a modern-day Thoreau.

Although high-performance human resource practices do not directly affect corporate social performance strengths, they do positively affect CSP strengths in companies that are highly innovative or have high levels of slack. High-performance human resource management practices also directly and negatively affect CSP concerns. Drawing on the resource-based view and using secondary data from an objective, third-party database, the authors develop and test hypotheses about how high-performance HRM affects a company’s CSP strengths and concerns. Findings suggest that HRM and innovation are (...) important capabilities because they create and enhance other capabilities. (shrink)

The closeness of somatosensory phenomena and emotional states can be critically extended into a clinical perspective by referring to Tourette's Syndrome (TS). Two examples are discussed in this commentary: (1) the neurodevelopmental approach to the pre- and post-tic sensorimotor urges, and (2) the TS treatment with deep brain stimulation. It is shown that in TS, both views (locationist and constructionist) need to be combined along the lifespan in order to get a more realistic picture of the brain basis of emotion.

Cascades of transcriptional regulation are the common source of the forward drive in all developmental systems. Increases in complexity and specificity of gene expression at successive stages are based on the collaboration of varied combinations of transcription factors already expressed in the cells to turn on new genes, and the logical relationships between the transcription factors acting and becoming newly expressed from stage to stage are best visualized as gene regulatory networks. However, gene regulatory networks used in different developmental contexts (...) underlie processes that actually operate through different sets of rules, which affect the kinetics, synchronicity, and logical properties of individual network nodes. Contrasting early embryonic development in flies and sea urchins with adult mammalian hematopoietic development from stem cells, major differences are seen in transcription factor dosage dependence, the silencing or damping impacts of repression, and the impact of cellular regulatory history on the parts of the genome that are accessible to transcription factor action in a given cell type. These different features not only affect the kinds of models that can illuminate developmental mechanisms in the respective biological systems, but also reflect the evolutionary needs of these biological systems to optimize different aspects of development. (shrink)

The Concert of Humans and Nightingales: Why Interspecies Music Works.

The development of T cells and B cells from pluripotent hematopoietic precursors occurs through a stepwise narrowing of developmental potential that ends in lineage commitment. During this process, lineage-specific genes are activated asynchronously, and lineage-inappropriate genes, although initially expressed, are asynchronously turned off. These complex gene expression events are the outcome of the changes in expression of multiple transcription factors with partially overlapping roles in early lymphocyte and myeloid cell development. Key transcription factors promoting B-cell development and candidates for this (...) role in T-cell development are discussed in terms of their possible modes of action in fate determination. We discuss how a robust, stable, cell-type–specific gene expression pattern may be established in part by the interplay between endogenous transcription factors and signals transduced by cytokine receptors, and in part by the network of effects of particular transcription factors on each other. BioEssays 21:726–742, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Hand's End offers a new philosophy of technology as the fundamental way in which humans experience and define nature―the tool as humanity extended. Rothenberg examines human inventions from the water wheel to the nuclear bomb and discusses theories of technology in the thought of philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Marx, Heidegger, Spinoza, Mumford, and McLuhan.

The goal of this article is to better understand the diffusion of environmentally preferable manufacturing technology (as distinct from pollution control technology) in small-and medium-sized firms (SMEs) and the influence of technical assistance programs on the diffusion of these technologies. The authors draw their insights from the printing industry, a sector where small firms predominate. They find that smaller firms lag slightly in the adoption of environmental technologies. With regard to technical assistance, they find that printers identify suppliers and other (...) industry sources as more useful than government in providing information that leads to active exploration of new environmental technologies. In addition, in comparison to larger firms, smaller firms reported to be less familiar with government-sponsored programs and perceived some of the programs to be less useful. They point to several ways in which regulatory agencies are experimenting to make government sponsored programs more effective. (shrink)

This book explores the philosophy of love through the thought and life of Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph. Readers of the Talmud are introduced to Rabbi Akiva through the iconic story of his love for his wife Rachel. From this starting point, Naftali Rothenberg conducts a thorough examination of the harmonious approach to love in the obstacle-laden context of human reality. Discussing the deterioration of passion into simple lust, the ability to contend with suffering and death, and so forth, Rothenberg addresses (...) the deepest and most pressing questions about human love. The readings and observations offered here allow readers to acquire the wisdom of love-not merely as an assemblage of theoretical arguments and abstract statements, but as an analysis of the internal contradictions and difficulties revealed in the context of attempts to realize and implement harmonious love. (shrink)

I first heard about renshi from Hiromi Itō, a remarkable and justifiably celebrated Japanese poet and writer, who has also been our neighbor in Encinitas, California, for most of the last two decades. Her presence among us goes back to 1991 and to my first visit to Japan, a contact I hadn’t had before but have been able to repeat six times since then.

In The Search for Safety, Aaron Wildavsky argues that the pervasiveness of uncertainty, the complexity of economy and society, and the trial‐and‐error strengths of a competitive market system make alleviating damages through market processes superior to a preventive strategy of regulatory anticipation. Close examination of a number of issues that are central to his argument— anticipation vs. resiliency, the effects of wealth on health, the competitive market as an engine for social trial and error, and equity in aggregating benefits and (...) costs across individuals and different probabilistic states—leads to considerable skepticism as to whether Wildavsky's strategy of less government regulation and a more unfettered market would indeed produce greater safety. (shrink)