Rare Disease research has seen tremendous advancements over the last decades, with the development of new technologies, various global collaborative efforts and improved data sharing. To maximize the impact of and to further build on these developments, there is a need for model consent clauses for rare diseases research, in order to improve data interoperability, to meet the informational needs of participants, and to ensure proper ethical and legal use of data sources and participants’ overall protection. A global Task Force (...) was set up to develop model consent clauses specific to rare diseases research, that are comprehensive, harmonized, readily accessible, and internationally applicable, facilitating the recruitment and consent of rare disease research participants around the world. Existing consent forms and notices of consent were analyzed and classified under different consent themes, which were used as background to develop the model consent clauses. The IRDiRC-GA4GH MCC Task Force met in September 2018, to discuss and design model consent clauses. Based on analyzed consent forms, they listed generic core elements and designed the following rare disease research specific core elements; Rare Disease Research Introductory Clause, Familial Participation, Audio/Visual Imaging, Collecting, storing, sharing of rare disease data, Recontact for matching, Data Linkage, Return of Results to Family Members, Incapacity/Death, and Benefits. The model consent clauses presented in this article have been drafted to highlight consent elements that bear in mind the trends in rare disease research, while providing a tool to help foster harmonization and collaborative efforts. (shrink)

Las discusiones suscitadas en torno a la exhortación apostólica Amoris laetitia evidencian que a seis lustros de la publicación de Veritatis splendor la temática del objeto moral no ha perdido actualidad. En este contexto, es interesante observar que algunas de las discusiones relativas a este tema tienen su origen en posiciones afines a los presupuestos de la Moral autónoma. A fin de poder efectuar una valoración crítica de tales posiciones, en este estudio ofrecemos una aproximación a la racionalidad normativa (...) teorizada por Franz Böckle en diálogo con el correspondiente discernimiento de Veritatis splendor sobre dicha racionalidad, el cual alcanza su cenit en la afirmación de la existencia de actos intrínsecamente malos. (shrink)

In this article, I trace lines of materialist pedagogies in the history of women workers’ education following feminist interpretations of Spinoza’s assemblage of joyful affects. More particularly, I focus on the notions of laetitia [joy], gaudium [gladness] and hilaritas [cheerfulness] as entanglements of joy and trace their expression in practices and discourses inscribed in archival documents that I have reassembled around the theme of women workers’ education. My reading of Ethics follows a range of feminist thinkers that have engaged (...) with Spinoza’s ‘ethics of joy’ in education and beyond. The article draws on extensive archival work with personal auto/biographical documents and public essays of women workers/educators/writers in Paris and New York that span the period between 1830 and 1950. What I argue is that it is the experience of creative and radical education that has created a platform for workers to re-imagine themselves in the world with others. (shrink)

In English, discourse reference to time involves grammatical tenses interpreted as temporal anaphors. Recently, it has been argued that conditionals involve modal discourse anaphora expressed by a parallel grammatical system of anaphoric modals. Based on evidence from Kalaallisut, this paper argues that temporal and modal anaphora can be just as precise in a language that does not have either grammatical category. Instead, temporal anaphora directly targets eventualities of verbs, without mediating tenses, while modal anaphora involves anaphoric moods and/or attitudinal verbs.

Although no scholarly consensus exists on the issue, the claim that a substantive reconfiguration of the Internet has occurred in the beginning of the 2000s has settled firmly in public common sense. The label tentatively chosen for the new turn in the medium’s evolution is Web 2.0. The developments constituting this turn have been contemplated from different perspectives in technical and business publications (O’Reilly 2005), in treatises on convergence or participatory culture (Jenkins 2006; Jenkins et al. 2009), and could be (...) usefully interrogated by means of political economy concepts such as the social factory and free labor (Terranova 2004). Marked, or rather symbolically constructed, by these discursive pickets lies a field of practice that the members of the participatory culture, the produsers (Bruns 2008) of open journalism, blogs, social networking sites and other characteristic Web 2.0 applications inhabit and animate with their everyday thought, decision making and action. This paper undertakes a theoretical exploration of the user practices emerging and consolidating around the new technological and organizational models making up Web 2.0. It is informed by a qualitative study of bloggers and Facebook users conducted through focus group methodology, although the concrete empirical data are not presented here. Rather, the analysis employs the concept of technologies of the self by Foucault (1988) as a heuristic device in order to situate Web 2.0 use, first, in a long history of culturally evolved forms of self-constitution and, second, in a complex matrix of relationships with other types of technologies, namely, those of production, sign systems and power. This conceptual choice, we argue, furnishes a study of Web 2.0 use, which holds in balance its liberatory potential and its susceptibility to new forms of domination, rationalization and commodification. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to argue for a position holding that epigenetic responsibility primarily should be a political and not an individual responsibility. Epigenetic is a rapidly growing research field studying regulations of gene expression that do not change the DNA sequence. Knowledge about these mechanisms is still uncertain in many respects, but main presumptions are that they are triggered by environmental factors and life style and, to a certain extent, heritable to subsequent generations, thereby reminding of aspects (...) of Lamarckism. Epigenetic research advances give rise to intriguing challenges for responsibility relations between the society and the individual. Responsibility is commonly understood in a backwards-looking manner, identifying causally responsible actors to blame for a bad outcome. If only a backwards-looking responsibility model is applied, epigenetics might give rise to arduous responsibility ascriptions to individuals for their health and the health of their future descendants. This would put heavy responsibility burdens on actors constrained by unequal social and economic structures. In contrast, a forward-looking responsibility notion takes account of structural conditions and pay attention to who is best placed to do something about conditions contributing to bad outcomes. A forward-looking responsibility notion would partly free disadvantaged individuals from responsibility, and identify actors with power and capacity to do something about structural factors constraining genuine choice. (shrink)

A range of themes—race and gender, sexuality, otherness, sisterhood, and agency—run throughout this collection, and the chapters constitute a collective discourse at the intersection of Black feminist thought and continental philosophy, converging on a similar set of questions and concerns. These convergences are not random or forced, but are in many ways natural and necessary: the same issues of agency, identity, alienation, and power inevitably are addressed by both camps. Never before has a group of scholars worked together to examine (...) the resources these two traditions can offer one another. By bringing the relationship between these two critical fields of thought to the forefront, the book will encourage scholars to engage in new dialogues about how each can inform the other. If contemporary philosophy is troubled by the fact that it can be too limited, too closed, too white, too male, then this groundbreaking book confronts and challenges these problems. -/- Table of Contents -/- Foreword Beverly Guy-Sheftall Acknowledgments Introduction: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, Kathryn T. Gines, and Donna-Dale L. Marcano -/- 1. Black Feminism, Poststructuralism, and the Contested Character of Experience Diane Perpich -/- 2. Sartre, Beauvoir, and the Race/Gender Analogy: A Case for Black Feminist Philosophy Kathryn T. Gines -/- 3. The Difference That Difference Makes: Black Feminism and Philosophy Donna-Dale L. Marcano -/- 4. Antigone’s Other Legacy: Slavery and Colonialism in Tègònni: An African Antigone Tina Chanter -/- 5. L Is for . . . : Longing and Becoming in The L-Word’s Racialized Erotic Aimee Carrillo Rowe -/- 6. Race and Feminist Standpoint Theory Anika Maaza Mann -/- 7. Rethinking Black Feminist Subjectivity: Ann duCille and Gilles Deleuze Maria del Guadalupe Davidson -/- 8. From Receptivity to Transformation: On the Intersection of Race, Gender, and the Aesthetic in Contemporary Continental Philosophy Robin M. James -/- 9. Extending Black Feminist Sisterhood in the Face of Violence: Fanon, White Women, and Veiled Muslim Women Traci C. West -/- 10. Madness and Judiciousness: A Phenomenological Reading of a Black Woman’s Encounter with a Saleschild Emily S. Lee -/- 11. Black American Sexuality and the Repressive Hypothesis: Reading Patricia Hill Collins with Michel Foucault Camisha Russell -/- 12. Calling All Sisters: Continental Philosophy and Black Feminist Thinkers Kathy Glass -/- Afterword: Philosophy and the Other of the Second Sex George Yancy Contributor Notes Index. (shrink)

In the ongoing pandemic, death statistics influence people’s feelings and government policy. But when does COVID-19 qualify as the cause of death? As philosophers of medicine interested in conceptual clarification, we address the question by analyzing the World Health Organization’s rules for the certification of death. We show that for COVID-19, WHO rules take into account both facts and values.

Este artículo presenta las difíciles relaciones entre perspectivas atentas al género y la bioetica. Tanto la ética como la ciencia, y en concreto la medicina, han sido objetadas desde enfoques feministas con el fin de revelar su sesgo androcéntrico. La bioética, no obstante, hasta hace bien poco, se ha mostrado reticente a considerar como categoría analítica el factor genero. Aludimos aquí a las causas de este desencuentro así como, posteriormente, a las posibilidades abiertas por una bioética feminista.This paper focuses on (...) the difficult relationship between bioethics and gender. Ethics and science, especially medicine, have been rejected from feminist perspectives revealing the androcentric bias. Bioethics, nevertheless, has resisted the option of consider gender as an analytic category. We point out the reasons of this resistance and also the open possibilities ofan feminist bioethics. (shrink)

This book argues that we can find the resources to build a public perspective if we make two commitments: to respect people as autonomous agents and to endorse a shared ethics of beliefs.

IN THE LAST PART of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith puts his theory in a class with those of his contemporaries Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, namely, the systems that make sentiments the principle of approbation. Despite recognizing important differences with both of them, he thinks that since he has placed the origin of moral sentiments in sympathy, and in particular the fact that we are able to enter into the motives of the agent and get pleasure from (...) finding them appropriate to their cause, sentiments are the foundation of his theory of morals. Many of Smith’s commentators, in fact almost all of the most important studies over the last few years, reaffirm the author’s self-description. However, my aim in this paper is to challenge this view by showing that Smith’s system can also be plausibly seen as a theory of practical reasoning, and in some important aspects very similar to Aristotelian ethics. Surprisingly few scholars have seen this parallel. Laurence Berns, Samuel Fleischacker, Charles Griswold, and Gloria Vivenza are the latest exceptions, identifying several points of coincidence between Adam Smith and Aristotle’s ethics. None of them, however, has tied all these similarities under a unified interpretation, such as the one I propose here: The basic analogy between these theories, and the source of those particular coincidences, is the operation of practical reason. Moreover, and besides the common elements with Aristotle’s ethics, Smith’s reconstruction of practical reason simultaneously announces some of the main features of modern accounts of ethics, such as impartiality and universality as preconditions of moral judgment. The integration of these ancient and modern elements in a single coherent theory allows Smith’s TMS to overcome the insufficiencies and paradoxes of both these traditions, and it constitutes one of the most interesting and challenging proposals of modern ethics. (shrink)

Der Begriff der Toleranz in der Moderne wurde erdacht mit dem Ziel, Gesellschaften zu organisieren, die sich im Umbruch befanden auf Grund des plötzlichen Eindringens von Glaubensunterschieden in die politische Raumordnung. Die Definition der Toleranz als Tugend, die auf der Nachgiebigkeit gegenüber dem Andersartigen basiert, ist ein Pseudobegriff. Die hermeneutische Veranlagung, die mit der Philosophie einhergeht, zeigt, dass die Toleranz keine schlichte moralische Tugend sein kann, sondern vielmehr eine der Beschaffenheiten der Möglichkeit rationaler Handlungen (die Arten des Seins und des (...) Sagens fallen in der Vielfältigkeit ihrer Formen zusammen). Die Geschichte der Hermeneutik zeigt seit ihren Anfängen – die exegetische Arbeit war hierbei grundlegend – die Zwickmühlen der Existenzformen der Rationalität und lässt nur ein Denken an der Grenze zu, welche ihre Grundlage ist: Es gibt keine Tatsachen, sondern Interpretationen. (shrink)

The Civil Economy approach, as developed by Italian economists Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, aims at introducing reciprocity into the economy as a humanizing factor. Despite being presented as an innovative perspective, the CE approach shares many characteristics with the German model of Social Market Economy. The present paper compares both approaches, showing that they in fact share a normative basis and similar aims but address them from diverse points of view; namely, CE addresses them from a virtue ethics perspective (...) and SME from an institutional ethics one. This leads them to stress different aspects and to focus on diverse problems. Therefore, CE would not constitute an alternative to SME but a complement. Thus, a combination of both approaches should allow each to take advantage of their respective strengths and lead to a better result in terms of the common good. (shrink)

So far, we have focused on discourse reference to atomic individuals and specific times, events, and states. The basic point of the argument was that all types of discourse reference involve attention-guided anaphora (in the sense of Bittner 2012: Ch. 2). We now turn to discourses involving anaphora to and by quantificational expressions. Today, we focus on quantification over individuals but the analysis we develop will directly generalize to other semantic types. The basic idea is that quantification is one more (...) species of top-level anaphora--to wit, anaphora to top-ranked sets. (shrink)

By this point, we have developed some articulated analyses of top-level temporal anaphora, including temporal quantification, in languages with grammatical tense and/or aspect systems, represented by English, Polish, and Mandarin. But it is still not clear how this approach might extend to temporal anaphora in a language such as Kalaallisut, which has neither grammatical tense nor grammatical aspect, but instead marks only grammatical mood and person. Most theories of mood and modal reference either ignore temporal reference or analyze modal and (...) temporal reference as unrelated phenomena. Such theories provide no inkling how temporal reference in a tenseless mood-based language can be as precise as in English. (shrink)

In this article I analyze the connection between the concepts of “actuality”, “upcoming” and “origin” found in the early reflections of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno to expose some of the defining borders of the transposition of criticisms made by both philosophers. Through the identification of “actuality” as a reflection on the conditions in which philosophy is legitimate, “upcoming” as a requisite for self-justification of philosophical knowledge, and “origin” as the claim of the historically unfinished, I show in what (...) sense a critical horizon is recovered by Benjamin and Adorno as an inexorable exercise of philosophical praxis. (shrink)

This is the last of three lectures on anaphoric parallels between individuals and possibilities across languages (IMS, Stuttgart, 2000).

This volume contains ten papers that have been collected by the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/Société canadienne d’histoire et de philosophie des mathématiques. It showcases rigorously-reviewed contemporary scholarship on an interesting variety of topics in the history and philosophy of mathematics from the seventeenth century to the modern era. -/- The volume begins with an exposition of the life and work of Professor Bolesław Sobociński. It then moves on to cover a collection of topics about twentieth-century philosophy (...) of mathematics, including Fred Sommers’s creation of Traditional Formal Logic and Alexander Grothendieck’s work as a starting point for discussing analogies between commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. Continuing the focus on the philosophy of mathematics, the next selections discuss the mathematization of biology and address the study of numerical cognition. The volume then moves to discussing various aspects of mathematics education, including Charles Davies’s early book on the teaching of mathematics and the use of Gaussian Lemniscates in the classroom. A collection of papers on the history of mathematics in the nineteenth century closes out the volume, presenting a discussion of Gauss’s “Allgemeine Theorie des Erdmagnetismus” and a comparison of the geometric works of Desargues and La Hire. Written by leading scholars in the field, these papers are accessible not only to mathematicians and students of the history and philosophy of mathematics, but also to anyone with a general interest in mathematics. (shrink)

The article deals with the main apocalyptic themes and motives in the modern religious literature of Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day of Adventists. The relevance of the apocalyptic perspective in the light of the acute problems of the present, in particular, in the context of the global world situation, is indicated. Author analyzed global problems in accordance with certain Biblical signs of "time of the end", apocalyptic feelings and expectations in the religious literature of Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day of Adventists. A (...) comparative analysis reveals the common and distinctive features of apocalyptic themes, plots and moods in the religious literature of Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day of Adventists. In this research author used general scientific and special methods. The main research approach was the systematic approach, which allowed integrating the diversity of the investigated material into apocalyptic problems in the field of philosophy and theology in order to carry out a coherent definition of the main themes and motifs in the Protestant literature. A comparative method was also used in this research. The main ideas in the religious literature of Jehovah's Witnesses in this context are: the proclamation of the Second Coming of Christ on Earth during the crisis periods; emphasis on the Millennial Kingdom in the Sky, the opposition of secular power to the Divine Structure. Seventh-day Adventist сoncept: judgment, Second Coming of Jesus Christ, first resurrection and ascension of saints; Armageddon, the devastation of the earth and the destruction of the wicked; Millennial kingdom of the righteous in heaven; The second resurrection and the last judgment; New Land. (shrink)

Adolescence has been linked to an enhanced tolerance of uncertainty and risky behavior and is possibly connected to an increased response toward rewards. However, previous research has produced inconsistent findings. To investigate whether these findings are due to different reward probabilities used in the experimental design, we extended a monetary incentive delay task by including three different reward probabilities. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, 25 healthy adolescents and 22 adults were studied during anticipation of rewards in the VS. Differently colored (...) cue stimuli indicated either a monetary or verbal trial and symbolized different reward probabilities, to which the participants were blinded. Results demonstrated faster reaction times for lower reward probabilities in both age groups. Adolescents were slower through all conditions and had less activation on a neural level. Imaging results showed a three-way interaction between age group x condition x reward probability with differences in percent signal change between adolescents and adults for the high reward probabilities while adolescents demonstrated differences for the lowest. Therefore, previous inconsistent findings could be due to different reward probabilities, which makes examining these crucial for a better understanding of adolescent and adult behavior. (shrink)

No fictional character is more renowned for his powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes. But is his extraordinary intellect merely a gift of fiction, or can we learn to cultivate these abilities ourselves, to improve our lives at work and at home? We can, says psychologist and journalist Maria Konnikova, and in Mastermind she shows us how. Beginning with the "brain attic"--Holmes's metaphor for how we store information and organize knowledge--Konnikova unpacks the mental strategies that lead to (...) clearer thinking and deeper insights. Drawing on twenty-first-century neuroscience and psychology, Mastermind explores Holmes's unique methods of ever-present mindfulness, astute observation, and logical deduction. In doing so, it shows how each of us, with some self-awareness and a little practice, can employ these same methods to sharpen our perceptions, solve difficult problems, and enhance our creative powers. For Holmes aficionados and casual readers alike, Konnikova reveals how the world's most keen-eyed detective can serve as an unparalleled guide to upgrading the mind. (shrink)

The concept of heterotopia challenges political theory, which has often focused on utopic thinking. Foucault describes a heterotopia as a heterogenous space that juxtaposes in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Streets, squares and parks form heterotopias when their utopic purity as public space is juxtaposed with the private spaces created by the cardboard boxes and other temporary shelters of homeless people. Since citizenship has traditionally been thought of as participation in a democratic (...) public sphere, how do heterotopias of homelessness challenge the ideas about citizenship? Based on narrative research with homeless people in Poland, I show how the homeless conceive of their marginality. Their participation or non-participation in democracy is not hidden but, on the contrary, very visible in public spaces where they are included as excluded. (shrink)

Resumen: La noción de tópos, concebido como un principio compartido por una comunidad, desempeña una función central en los tratados de retórica desde la Antigüedad grecolatina. Este concepto también resulta relevante, creemos, en el discurso literario y permite trazar relaciones entre literatura y retórica. Si bien la literatura comparada le asigna autonomía al término y tiende a disociarlo de su función persuasiva, entendemos que los tópicos desempeñan en la comedia antigua una función compleja: operan como motivos literarios, pero también adoptan (...) a la vez una finalidad argumentativa. La comedia de Aristófanes, en particular, propugna ciertas ideas políticas, empleando varios tópicos, ya sea bajo la forma de enunciados o de personajes-tipo. Los tópicos se utilizan, entonces, tanto en la oratoria como en la comedia con fines persuasivos.: The notion of tópos, conceived as a principle shared by a community, has a central place in the treatises of rhetoric from Greco-Roman antiquity. This concept is also relevant, we believe, in literary discourse and it allows to establish a connections between literature and rhetoric. While comparative literature tends to disassociate this notion from its persuasive function, we understand that the tópoi have a complex function in ancient comedy: the tópoi are literary motifs, but also adopt an argumentative purpose. Aristophanes' comedy, in particular, advocates certain political ideas, using a series of tópoi, either in the form of statements or character types. The tópoi are then used in both oratory and comedy with persuasive purposes. (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone demostrar que el personaje de Demóstenes cumple un papel central dentro de la estrategia persuasiva de la pieza, que intenta degradar la imagen pública de Cleón. En las obras tempranas, el héroe cómico suele ser el principal portavoz de la postura defendida en la obra; sin embargo, en Caballeros la imagen del héroe, el Morcillero, resulta al principio tan devaluada que debilita la fuerza argumentativa del ataque; en este sentido, Demóstenes actúa como un héroe provisorio y (...) un portavoz autorizado del enunciador-autor hasta que el Morcillero alcanza legitimidad y verdadera estatura heroica. This paper aims to demonstrate that the character of Demosthenes plays a central role in the persuasive strategy of the piece, which attempts to degrade the public image of Cleon. In the early works, the comic hero is usually the main spokesperson who defends the position maintained in the work; however, the image of the hero in Knights, the Sausage-Seller, is so devaluated at first that the argumentative force of the attack becomes weak; in this sense, Demosthenes acts as a provisional hero and authorized spokesman for the enunciatorauthor until the Sausage-Seller reaches more legitimacy and true heroic stature. (shrink)