We are currently observing a shift in the relevance of ethical concerns regarding security screening systems. Due to technological progress, so my hypothesis goes, more direct consequences that such systems may have on the screening subjects' health and bodily privacy become increasingly unimportant compared to more indirect ones resulting from unrestrained information processing and excessive proliferation. However, a specific technical design of a screening system may help to prevent ethically unacceptable applications.

This paper is concerned with the problem of selfidentification in the domain of action. We claim that this problem can arise not just for the self as object, but also for the self as subject in the ascription of agency. We discuss and evaluate some proposals concerning the mechanisms involved in selfidentification and in agencyascription, and their possible impairments in pathological cases. We argue in favor of a simulation hypothesis that claims that actions, whether overt or covert, are centrally simulated (...) by the neural network, and that this simulation provides the basis for action recognition and attribution. (shrink)

This article shows how Plato’sParmenidesexplores the relationship between place and the geometric forms that are inscribed in it, independently of sensation, becoming and causality. The analysis concurs with essential points of what is said in theTimaeusaboutkhôra, this receptacle deprived of any intrinsic qualities, on which every sensitive reality is drawn.

In their recent article "Ideology in Action" in this journal, Alan Fine and Kent Sandstrom (1993) offer a theoretical account of ideology informed by pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. The authors provide compelling reasons for understanding ideology not simply as beliefs but as situated social action. Their effort to retrieve the analysis of ideology from the realm of the noosphere is a welcome departure from more traditional conceptions. Moreover, they provide a convincing case for bringing ideological analysis back into many of (...) our analyses of social life. In the following pages I wish to engage the authors on the terrain they have laid out. Drawing on the linguistic turn in recent social theory, I offer a few friendly critiques of their interactionist conception of ideology. After reviewing these problems I discuss how a dialogic analysis of ideology can build on Fine and Sandstrom's important account of ideology, as well as offering additional insights into its nature and dynamics. I begin, however, with a capsule review of the authors' conception of ideology in action. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ Le principal objectif de ce texte est d'apporter certaines clarifications par rapport à des problèmes et difficultés entourant l'usage actuel des notions de culture, d'appartenance et de dialogue. L'auteur montre que l'idée selon laquelle on pourrait être prisonnier de sa propre culture découle d'une transformation récente de la signification du concept de culture. Cette idée est critiquée comme étant un mythe, le mythe de la monade culturelle, reposant sur une mécompréhension des rapports entre culture, appartenance et dialogue. L'auteur s'efforce (...) de proposer une meilleure compréhension de ces trois concepts, de façon à éviter toute forme de relativisme radical. ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to shed light on some difficulties and problems related to the current use of the concepts of culture, belonging and dialogue. The author shows that the idea that we could be prisoners of our own culture stems from a recent transformation of the meaning of the concept of culture. This idea is criticized as a myth, the myth of the cultural monad, based on a misunderstanding of the relationship among culture, belonging and dialogue. The author tries to offer a better understanding of these three concepts, in order to avoid any form of radical relativism. (shrink)

Donald Davidson's work has been of seminal importance in the development of analytic philosophy and his views on the nature of language, mind and action remain the starting point for many of the central debates in the analytic tradition. His ideas, however, are complex, often technical, and interconnected in ways that can make them difficult to understand. This introduction to Davidson's philosophy examines the full range of his writings to provide a clear succinct overview of his ideas. This book begins (...) with an account of the assumptions and structure of Davidson's philosophy of language, introducing his compositionalism, extensionalism and commitment to a Tarski-style theory of truth as the model for theories of meaning. It goes on to show how that philosophical framework is to be applied and how it challenges the traditional picture. Marc Joseph examines Davidson's influential work on action theory and events and discusses the commonly made charge that his theory of action and mind leaves the mental as a mere 'epiphenomenon' of the physical. The final section explores Davidson's philosophy of mind, some of its consequences for traditional views of subjectivity and objectivity and, more generally, the relation between minded beings and the physical and mental world they occupy. (shrink)

The practice around informed consent in clinical medicine is both inconsistent and inadequate. Indeed, in busy, contemporary health care settings, getting informed consent looks little like the formal process developed over the past sixty years and presented in medical textbooks, journal articles, and academic lectures. In this article, members of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Collaborative on Ethics and Humanities review the conventional process of informed consent and its limitations, explore complementary and alternative approaches to doctor‐patient interactions, (...) and propose a new model of consent that integrates these approaches with each other and with clinical practice. The model assigns medical interventions to a consent continuum defined by the discrete categories of traditional informed consent, assent, and nondissent. Narrative descriptions and clinical exemplars are offered for each category. The authors invite colleagues from other disciplines and from the academic ethics community to provide feedback and commentary. (shrink)

Whereas classic work in judgment and decision making has focused on the deviation of intuition from rationality, more recent research has focused on the performance of intuition in real-world environments. Borrowing from both approaches, we investigate to which extent competing models of intuitive probabilistic decision making overlap with choices according to the axioms of probability theory and how accurate those models can be expected to perform in real-world environments. Specifically, we assessed to which extent heuristics, models implementing weighted additive information (...) integration (WADD), and the parallel constraint satisfaction (PCS) network model approximate the Bayesian solution and how often they lead to correct decisions in a probabilistic decision task. PCS and WADD outperform simple heuristics on both criteria with an approximation of 88.8% and a performance of 73.7%. Results are discussed in the light of selection of intuitive processes by reinforcement learning. (shrink)

Globalization is a ubiquitousyet highly elusive term. The debate on the cont and meaning of globalization is still waged largely in binary terms; for example, globalization is understood either as increasing standardization or as increasing difference. This article argues that the effects of globalization are best understood in terms of the following three sets of simultaneous contradictions: convergence and divergence, inclusion and exclusion, and centralization and decentralization. These contradictions can be fruitfully “unpacked” and examined through critical stakeholder analysis (CSA). This (...) technique focuses on broader structural commonalties and differences among key stakeholder groups, factors that are not incorporated in mainstream stakeholder theory. The associated normative agenda of CSA promotes a common understanding of key issues within a focal organizational field, the negotiated settlement of zero-sum situations that optimize collective stakeholder interests within that field, and the containment and minimization of negative externalities within as well as between fields. (shrink)

The sociology of emotions is a fast-growing disciplinary field. Research on emotions has enabled major advances in medical science, political science, anthropology, psychosociology etc. Turner and Smets have shown that social relations feature a kernel of phenomena with an emotional substrate ranging from face-to-face encounters to the emergence of social movements. The social arena is shaped by emotions, which are powerful agents of change. In this paper, we focus on the links between emotions, happiness and well-being apprehended as a polymorphic (...) state culturally determined by an emotional substrate. Finally, through the lenses of emotions, we sketch out the features of the structural crisis of neoliberalism and the lessons for a renewed understanding of the underlying socio-economic phenomena. (shrink)

Engineering, as a complex and multidimensional practice of technology development, has long been a source of ethical concerns. These concerns have been approached from various perspectives. There are ongoing debates in the literature of the philosophy of engineering/technology about how to organize an optimized view of the values entailed in technology development processes. However, these debates deliver little in the way of a concrete rationale or framework that could comprehensively describe different types of engineering values and their multi-aspect interrelations in (...) real engineering practices. Approaching engineering values from a meaning-based perspective, as in this paper, can be a reliable method of tackling such a controversial problem. This paper therefore proposes that technology development be considered a systemic normative practice and attempts to provide a comprehensive view of various built-in values, their different origins and features, and a way of prioritizing them in real engineering processes. Studying two cases of the Zayandeh Rood Dam and the Abbasi Dam will lead to practical insights into how to understand norms in technology development and incorporate them into engineering practice. (shrink)

The question of whether relics which were part of the historical body of Jesus could exist, arose in the first decades of the 12th century, as the monks of St. Medard des Soissons claimed to have a tooth of Jesus. Based on historical and theological reasoning it seemed to Guibert of Nogent impossible that this kind of relic could exist or that they could mediate the redemption which Christ attained on the Cross. According to him, the prize of salvation could (...) only be mediated through the eucharist. Guibert perceived a twofold mediality of the eucharist which at the same time reprents the holy body of Christ and mediates salvation. This medial dimension of the eucharist is denoted with the term figura. Since the Second Eucharist Debate and as a result of the criticism of Berengar of Tours the term figura became precarious. The discussion between Berengar and his opponents such as Durandus of Troarn, Guitmund of Adversa, Alger of Liège about the term figura can be viewed as a debate concerning mediality. (shrink)

We examined the relationship between sleep and the affective components of subjective well-being as well as psychological well-being, and between sleep and academic performance, of full-time undergraduate students in a residential college at the National University of Singapore. The aspects of sleep considered were self-reported sleep duration, sleep efficiency, frequency of sleep disturbances, daytime dysfunction, sleep latency and overall sleep quality, as measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Academic performance was measured using self-reported cumulative average point scores, typically known (...) as grade point average in other institutions. Psychological well-being and the affective components of subjective well-being were assessed using the Flourishing Scale and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience, respectively. With the exception of sleep latency, our univariate analysis revealed significant associations between the abovementioned facets of sleep, and the affective components of subjective well-being. The analysis also revealed significant associations between the above sleep variables and psychological well-being, except sleep latency and frequency of sleep disturbances. Only daytime dysfunction was found to be significantly correlated with academic performance in our univariate analysis. In addition, our multivariate analysis shows that psychological well-being, affect balance and academic performance each has a direct effect on overall sleep quality. The relationship between overall sleep quality and psychological well-being is U-shaped, while that between overall sleep quality and affect balance is linear and moderated by psychological well-being. The relationship between overall sleep quality and academic performance is either U-shaped or an inverted-U, depending on the level of psychological well-being, which moderates the relationship. These nonlinear relationships indicate that individuals with the highest levels of psychological well-being are not the best sleepers, neither are the highest academic achievers necessarily the best sleepers. (shrink)

Un des principaux intérêts de la linguistique antique dans l'aire grécoromaine est la pluralité des points de vue portés sur le langage, la diversité des modes d'approche et d'analyse du domaine abordé: le langage n'était pas perçu de la même façon selon qu'il était analysé sous l'angle de la grammaire, de la rhétorique ou de la philosophie, et l'histoire des idées linguistiques de l'Antiquité est faite de la combinaison de ces points de vue. Cette pluralité a entraîné dans l'Antiquité elle-même (...) d'incessants problèmes de frontières entre les différentes disciplines concernées, avec toutes sortes d'exclusions, de tentatives hégémoniques, de contestations et de redéfinitions de chacun des domaines. Curieusement, le traitement moderne de l'histoire de la linguistique antique a volontiers reproduit cette situation conflictuelle: il est constant au XIXe siècle, et au XXe siècle jusqu'à une date récente, de présenter la grammaire comme «fille de la philosophie», non pas tant pour souligner une filiation génétique quelconque que pour installer un rapport hiérarchique et afficher d'entrée de jeu la primauté de la philosophie et l'incapacité supposée de la linguistique antique à s'affranchir de ses origines et à fonder l'autonomie de son champ d'analyse. À vrai dire, cette vision des choses avait changé depuis une vingtaine d'années, les chercheurs renonçant à cette conception, au profit d'une étude de la spécificité de chaque point de vue. Cependant, peut-être parce que chaque génération cherche à se démarquer de la précédente, une jeune chercheuse, Frédérique Ildefonse, propose dans cette Naissance de la grammaire dans l'Antiquité grecque une reprise de l'interprétation «philosophique» de la linguistique antique, et à vrai dire il n'est pas inintéressant en effet de réexaminer aujourd'hui, à l'aune des progrès accomplis ces dernières années, ce qui était le socle de la réflexion d'un Lersch ou d'un Steinthal. (shrink)

This essay critiques Professor Martha Nussbaum's book, Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality . Nussbaum's thesis is that the entire tradition of religious liberty in America can be both best understood and justified by recourse to the overarching principle of equal respect —that “[a]ll citizens have equal rights and deserve equal respect from the government under which they live.” Nussbaum insists that equal respect pervades the tradition and that all other values of religious liberty are (...) subordinate to it. She examines various free-exercise and establishment issues in light of this principle, concluding that the tradition of religious equality is under threat and calling for renewed vigilance in its defense. This essay criticizes Nussbaum's elevation of the principle of equal respect to supreme normative status. It claims that Nussbaum's single-minded focus on equal respect distorts and misunderstands the conflicts actually at issue in many religious liberty disputes. The essay focuses specifically on the inadequacies of her assessment of two prominent religious liberty cases, one in the free exercise and the other in the established context. This essay concludes that there are reasons for deep skepticism about Nussbaum's approach as a comprehensive theory of the religion clauses. (shrink)

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