In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological ...

There is currently a great debate about whether the holobiont, i.e. a multicellular host and its residential microorganisms, constitutes a biological individual. We propose that resident microorganisms have a general and important role in the individuality of the host organism, not the holobiont. Drawing upon the Equilibrium Model of Immunity, we argue that microorganisms are scaffolds of immune capacities and processes that determine the constituency and persistence of the host organism. A scaffolding perspective accommodates the contingency and heterogeneity of resident (...) microorganisms while accounting for their necessity and unifying contributions to host individuality. In our symbiotic view of life, holobionts may not be organisms or units of selection, but macroorganisms cannot persist nor function as individuals without their scaffolding microorganisms. (shrink)

Morality and economic rationality: integrative economic ethics as the rational ethics of economic activity; Part II. Reflections on the Foundations of Economic ...

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationships among ethical context, organizational commitment, and person-organization fit using a sample of 304 young working adults. Results indicated that corporate ethical values signifying different cultural aspects of an ethical context were positively related to both organizational commitment and person-organization fit. Organizational commitment was also positively related to person-organization fit. The findings suggest that the development and promotion of an ethical context might enhance employees' workplace experiences, and companies should consider adopting (...) ethical policies that support principled conduct, punish unethical actions, and increase individual perceptions of an ethical company environment. (shrink)

SummaryA sample of 104 British parents with criminal convictions had an average fertility of 3·91 children as compared with 2·21 for the general population. The result suggests that fertility for criminal behaviour is dysgenic involving an increase in the genes underlying criminal behaviour in the population.

Not only the public debate about science but even the way scientists conceive their own work is to some extent determined by cultural images. In the case of synthetic biology, literary figures like the Golem of Prague and its successors, such as Frankenstein’s monster, seem to suggest themselves. This article reconstructs some cognitive structures underlying the surface of metaphorical thinking and shows how talking about synthetic biology as similar to Golem-making obscures important onto- logical, pragmatic, and ethical differences.

In this article, the author argues that feminist anthropology as a field of study should pose questions about how differential power is constituted as gender differences. Addressing these questions calls for an approach to the study of gender and power that articulates the relationship between structure and agency. Such an approach is one that analyzes the practice of gender over time from intersubjective, political perspectives. Last, the author argues that feminist anthropology is a justice claim, which demands an ethic of (...) engagement. Working on this project, feminist anthropologists contribute to debates over the concept of culture and the epistemological problem of representation within anthropology in a way that allows anthropology to speak more fluently to current debates within cultural studies over the politics of culture. (shrink)

Successful transitions to a sustainable bioeconomy require novel technologies, processes, and practices as well as a general agreement about the overarching normative direction of innovation. Both requirements necessarily involve collective action by those individuals who purchase, use, and co-produce novelties: the consumers. Based on theoretical considerations borrowed from evolutionary innovation economics and consumer social responsibility, we explore to what extent consumers’ scope of action is addressed in the scientific bioeconomy literature. We do so by systematically reviewing bioeconomy-related publications according to (...) the extent to which consumers are regarded as passive vs. active, and different domains of consumer responsibility. We find all aspects of active consumption considered to varying degrees but observe little interconnection between domains. In sum, our paper contributes to the bioeconomy literature by developing a novel coding scheme that allows us to pinpoint different aspects of consumer activity, which have been considered in a rather isolated and undifferentiated manner. Combined with our theoretical considerations, the results of our review reveal a central research gap which should be taken up in future empirical and conceptual bioeconomy research. The system-spanning nature of a sustainable bioeconomy demands an equally holistic exploration of the consumers’ prospective and shared responsibility for contributing to its coming of age, ranging from the procurement of information on bio-based products and services to their disposal. (shrink)

Policies and position statements regarding decision-making for extremely premature babies exist in many countries and are often directive, focusing on parental choice and expected outcomes. These recommendations often state survival and handicap as reasons for optional intervention. The fact that such outcome statistics would not justify such approaches in other populations suggests that some other powerful factors are at work. The value of neonatal intensive care has been scrutinized far more than intensive care for older patients and suggests that neonatal (...) care is held to a higher standard of justification. The relative value placed on the life of newborns, in particular the preterm, is less than expected by any objective medical data or any prevailing moral frameworks about the value of individual lives. Why do we feel less obligated to treat the premature baby? Do we put newborns in a special and lesser moral category? We explore this question from a legal and ethical perspective and offer several hypotheses pertaining to personhood, reproductive choices, “precious children,” and probable evolutionary and anthropological factors. (shrink)

Ergebnisse und Konsequenzen der Hirnforschung stoßen auf breites Interesse und werden in der Öffentlichkeit kontrovers diskutiert. Die Realität des Mentalen, die Freiheit des Willens und schließlich auch die Frage nach Gott und dem Ursprung von Religion stehen auf dem Prüfstand. Philosophie und Theologie sind herausgefordert, sich an der Debatte zu beteiligen. Der vorliegende Band führt in die gegenwärtige Diskussion zur Philosophie und zur Theologie des Geistes ein.

In this note we show that over a strong intuitionistic base theory, the recursive comprehension principle \ -CA does not imply the disjunctive Markov principle MP\.

In this paper a new method, elimination of Skolem functions for monotone formulas, is developed which makes it possible to determine precisely the arithmetical strength of instances of various non-constructive function existence principles. This is achieved by reducing the use of such instances in a given proof to instances of certain arithmetical principles. Our framework are systems ${\cal T}^{\omega} :={\rm G}_n{\rm A}^{\omega} +{\rm AC}$ -qf $+\Delta$ , where (G $_n$ A $^{\omega})_{n \in {\Bbb N}}$ is a hierarchy of (weak) subsystems (...) of arithmetic in all finite types (introduced in [14]), AC-qf is the schema of quantifier-free choice in all types and $\Delta$ is a set of certain analytical principles which e.g. includes the binary König's lemma. We apply this method to show that the arithmetical closures of single instances of $\Pi^0_1$ -comprehension and -choice contribute to the growth of extractable bounds from proofs relative to ${\cal T}^\omega$ only by a primitive recursive functional in the sense of Kleene. In subsequent papers these results are widely generalized and the method is used to determine the arithmetical content of single sequences of instances of the Bolzano-Weierstraß principle for bounded sequences in ${\Bbb R}^d$ , the Ascoli-lemma and others. (shrink)

Immer noch wird in der Wissenschaftsphilosophie der Sozialwissenschaften der Dualismus zwischen Natur- und Sozialwissenschaften diskutiert. Diese Analyse will das Problem als fiktiv erweisen. Zu diesem Zweck werden zunächst intuitiv plausible Argumente gegen eine Trennung vorgebracht, die vor allem auf die "neuen" diachronen Entwicklungen in den Naturwissenschaften abheben. Damit wird die These der strukturellen Gleichheit von Natur- und Sozialwissenschaften vorbereitet. Die These selbst wird mittels des formalen Instrumentariums des strukturalistischen Theorienkonzepts von Stegmüller/Sneed belegt. Dieses Konzept erweist die strukturelle Gleichheit aller Wissenschaften, (...) die sich auf die Realität beziehen. Von daher kann der Dualismus von Natur- und Sozialwissenschaften nicht länger aufrecht erhalten werden. (shrink)

This essay critiques feminist treatments of maternal-fetal "relationality" that unwittingly replicate features of Western individualism (for example, the Cartesian division between the asocial body and the social-cognitive person, or the conflation of social and biological birth). I argue for a more reflexive perspective on relationality that would acknowledge how we produce persons through our actions and rhetoric. Personhood and relationality can be better analyzed as dynamic, negotiated qualities realized through social practice.

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 68-70.

I understand the claim that there is a right to work as the claim that involuntary unemployment is an injustice that requires of justice enforcement institutions to stop it. I argue that in present conditions of high productivity it is more consistent with the liberal tradition to proclaim a right to develop one’s capabilities than a right to work. The steps of my argument are: (1) An important though not the only reason for considering unemployment unjust has been what I (...) call the Promethean idea of society. (2) The Promethean idea is implied by the liberal idea of rights. (3) There are two conceptions of the Promethean idea, the centralist and the autonomous one. (4) Only the latter is acceptable. (5) Involuntary unemployment is unjust even if the dole is decently high. (6) The injustice of unemployment can be stopped only by institutions that enable everyone to use their capabilities in realizing the Promethean idea. (7) One such institution is basic income. (8) As employment is not necessary for survival, we should replace the right to work with a right to develop one’s capabilities. (shrink)

Special issue. With contributions by Luc Bovens and Stephan Hartmann, David Glass, Keith Lehrer, Erik Olsson, Tomoji Shogenji, Mark Siebel, and Paul Thagard.

In recent years the works of Friedman, Howard and many others have made obvious what perhaps was always self-evident. Namely, that the philosophy of the logical empiricists was shaped primarily by Einstein and his invention of the theory of relativity, whereas Hilbert and his axiomatic approach to the exact sciences had comparatively little impact on the logical empiricists and their understanding of science — if they had any effect at all. This is in one respect quite astonishing, insofar as Einstein (...) himself confessed 1921 in his famous lecture before the Prussian Academy of Science that “without it [the axiomatic point of view] it would have been impossible for me to propound the theory of relativity”.2 Hence the simple question arises: why didn’t the logical empiricists pay more attention to Hilbert and his axiomatic point of view, than they in fact did? It is an aim of this paper to answer this question and in part to correct this one-sided view in the hypothetical or contra-factual sense that the logical empiricists would have done better, if they had paid somewhat more attention to Hilbert and his axiomatic approach to science. (shrink)