mechanism" is frequently encountered in the social science literature, but there is considerable confusion about the exact meaning of the term. The article begins by addressing the main conceptual issues. Use of this term is the hallmark of an approach that is critical of the explanatory deficits of correlational analysis and of the covering-law model, advocating instead the causal reconstruction of the processes that account for given macro-phenomena. The term "social mechanisms" should be used to refer to recurrent processes generating (...) a specific kind of outcome. Explanation of social macro-phenomena by mechanisms typically involves causal regression to lower-level elements, as stipulated by methodological individualism. While there exist a good many mechanism models to explain emergent effects of collective behavior, we lack a similarly systematic treatment of generative mechanisms in which institutions and specific kinds of structural configurations play the decisive role. Key Words: causal regression • correlational analysis • emergent effects • micro-macro processes • social mechanisms • structural determinants. (shrink)

Klein, Renate The practice of surrogacy in Australia has been controversial since its beginning in the late 1980s. In 1988, the famous 'Kirkman case' in the state of Victoria put surrogacy on the national map. This was a two-sisters surrogacy - Linda and Maggie Kirkman and the resulting baby Alice - in which power differences between the two women were extraordinarily stark: Maggie was the glamorous and well spoken woman of the world; Linda who carried the baby, was the (...) demure school teacher in child-like frocks and pig tails. Their IVF doctor applauded altruistic surrogacy. He called it 'gestational surrogacy' and proclaimed that if the so-called surrogate mother didn't use her own eggs, thus wasn't the baby's 'genetic' mother, no attachment would ensue! This statement is haunting us to this day. It is patently absurd: as a baby grows in a woman's body over the nine months of the pregnancy, it is hard to see why the 24/7 presence of the baby inside her body, its growth, its interaction with her would be any different whether s/he has the mother's genes! (shrink)

Recent developments around the sharing economy bring to the fore questions of governability and broader societal benefit—and subsequently the need to explore effective means of public governance, from nurturing, on the one hand, to restriction, on the other. As sharing is a predominately urban phenomenon in modern societies, cities around the globe have become both locus of action and central actor in the debates over the nature and organization of the sharing economy. However, cities vary substantially in the interpretation of (...) potential opportunities and challenges, as well as in their governance responses. Building on a qualitative comparative analysis of 16 leading global cities, our findings reveal four framings of the sharing economy: ‘societal endangerment,’ ‘societal enhancement,’ ‘market disruption,’ and ‘ecological transition.’ Such framings go hand in hand with patterned governance responses: although there is considerable heterogeneity in the combination of public governance strategies, we find specific configurations of framings and public governance strategies. Our work reflects the political and ethical debates on various economic, social, and moral issues related to the sharing economy, and contributes to a better understanding of the field-level institutional arrangements—a prerequisite for examining moral behavior of sharing economy organizations. (shrink)

There are only five letters and two postcards which were written by Emmy Noether to P.S. Alexandroff that have been preserved. These will be edited in this paper. More than any other source, these letters and postcards give an insight into Emmy Noether's privacy, and her sympathy for the problems of her pen pal and colleagues. They illuminate her judgement of different colleagues, students, «mathematical grandchildren» and their papers. They also inform about relationships within the mathematicians' community and the working (...) atmosphere in Goettingen and the US after 1933. The author thanks Prof. Dr. Walter Purkert, Bonn, for the reference to the writings of Emmy Noether, and Prof. Dr. Albert Shiryaev, Moscow, for the kind publication permission. (shrink)

Precision medicine and digital phenotyping are two prominent data-based approaches within digital medicine. While precision medicine historically used primarily genetic data to find targeted treatment options, digital phenotyping relies on the usage of big data deriving from digital devices such as smartphones, wearables and other connected devices. This paper first focusses on the aspect of data type to explore differences and similarities between precision medicine and digital phenotyping. It outlines different ways of data collection and production and the consequences thereof. (...) Second, it shows how these sorts of data influence dominant beliefs in the field: The field of precision medicine relying on the dominant understanding of ‘genetic determinism’ imported from genetics, digital phenotyping building on the logic of ‘data fundamentalism’. In the end, the analysis shows how digital data informs potentials as well as challenges of precision medicine and digital phenotyping: a better health care for individuals connected with individualisation and responsibilisation for all, with a prognosed shift from reactive to preventive medicine. Additionally, data-based approaches might facilitate epistemological and ontological redirections for the whole field of medicine that will also affect knowledge production and a reassessment of the value of different types of knowledge with all its consequences. Institutionally, it might lead to shifts in distribution of power to experts in big data related technologies, i.e. private companies. (shrink)

This book provides the first detailed account of Gramsci's work in the context of current critical and socio-cultural debates. Renate Holub argues that Gramsci was ahead of his time in offering a theory of art, politics and cultural production. Gramsci's achievement is discussed particularly in relation to the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Bloch, Habermas), to Brecht's theoretical writings and to thinkers in the phenomenological tradition especially Merleau-Ponty. She argues for Gramsci's continuing relevance at a time of retreat from (...) Marxist positions on the postmodern left. Antonio Gramsci is distinguished by its range of philosophical grasp, its depth of specialized historical scholarship, and its keen sense of Gramsci's position as a crucial figure in the politics of contemporary cultural theory. (shrink)

There is a strong interconnection between the social and environmental spheres. The efforts of monitoring and forecasting of disastrous events can illustrate benefits and threats of technicization and science. In ecophilosophy the forecasting of hazards is today extremely needed. It is not about creating theoretical unified structures or practical return to holistic harmony of a primordial man with nature. It is about, as Félix Guattari once held it, the complexity of the relationship between humans and their natural environment. Though the (...) desired maintenance of the conflict between industrial society and natural systems now seems impossible, we still can start moving towards it: theoretically, by developing eco-philosophical ideas, and practically, monitoring and forecasting catastrophes and disasters, to protect human life and health and, as eco-philosophers would say, keep land usable for human purposes. The topic of the earthquakes forecast today is more in demand than ever. (shrink)

This paper offers a contribution to ecophilosophy from the perspective of the scientific research of the environment. The problem considered in the paper deals with a specific issue of environmental risk, namely, the problem of radon ionizing radiation and the highest permissible security norms of it. This problem, now rarely discussed in ecological communities, is one of more important for humankind’s health and safe existence. The awareness of harmful and beneficial biological effects of various environmental factors is a basic step (...) towards ensuring the security of public health. The admissible norms of radon radiation are different in different countries. The article suggests possible causes of these differences and puts forward the thesis that today’s science alone is not a sufficient ground of resolving ecological problems. (shrink)

July 2008 saw a conclusion to a case which began with a request to the Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service under the Freedom of Information Act 2002 and culminated in a hearing in front of the House of Lords as Court of Appeal. The outcome, however, can be considered both a triumph and a failure for data protection law.This paper analyzes the House of Lords decision to determine whether the judgment has provided more legal clarity in an (...) area in which guidance is still very much required. (shrink)

Modal logic is one of the most widely applied logical formalisms. Systems of modal logic are being used in many disciplines, ranging from artificial intelligence, computer science, mathematics, formal grammar and semantics to philosophy. This volume presents substantial recent advances in the relational and the algorithmic treatment of modal logics. It contains papers from the fifth conference on "Advances in Modal logic," held in Manchester (UK) in September 2004. Written by leading experts in the field, the present book is indispensable (...) for any advanced student and researcher in pure and applied modal logic. (shrink)

The epistemological problems of unification of two distinct theories are discussed. An approach related to the work of Soviet authors (Stepin, Podgoretzky and Smorodinsky) is used and developed. The notion of ‘crossbred objects’—theoretical objects with contradictory properties which are part of the domain of application of two independent theories—is introduced which helps to describe the dynamics of revolutionary theory change. The occurrence of the cross-contradiction of two theories is reconstructed and the reductionistic and the synthetic means of its elimination are (...) proposed. The results of the methodological analysis are applied to the paradox of equivalence. (shrink)

As COVID-19 continues to spread, a variety of COVID-19 tracking apps (CTAs) have been introduced to help contain the pandemic. Deployment of this technology poses serious challenges of effectiveness, technological problems and risks to privacy and equity. The ethical use of CTAs depends heavily on the protection of voluntariness. Voluntary use of CTAs implies not only the absence of a legal obligation to employ the app but also the absence of more subtle forms of coercion such as enforced exclusion from (...) certain social and work activities. The protection of individual rights to voluntary use can be enhanced through an ethics by design approach in the development of CTAs that treat the introduction of CTAs for what it is: a complete novelty that is being tested for the first time in democracies. (shrink)

Knowledge work increasingly takes place in collaborative events from different and changing workplaces due to mobility, multi-locational, and geographical distribution of team members. What are the key elements to create mutual understanding and make creative collaborative decisions in global business meetings? How can these key elements be designed as shikake nudges to build awareness of the individual and team conditions to help knowledge workers make better work environment choices and reach higher levels of engagement? We addressed this question as a (...) transformative journey from island of knowledge to mutual understanding in the context of collaborative decision making in creative global business meetings. We present a “Six Steps to Engagement” framework that offers three feedback loops as shikake triggers to improve the local and global collaboration context and behavior, and three choice-decision-commitment steps toward improving the work environment and increasing knowledge work productivity. To support this framework, we define the following: (1) mutual understanding metrics (MUM) and method for self-assessment and 360 team assessment that define different MUM stages in the journey from island of knowledge to mutual understanding; and (2) an engagement Matrix of Choices (eMoC) prototype to assist geographically distributed knowledge workers to make explicit choices with an understanding of the potential level of engagement and collaboration they can achieve and the respective enablers and hindrances. We argue that iterative and continuous MUM assessment and explicit eMoC choices are central to achieve mutual understanding, high-performance teamwork, and eliminate rework, coordination, and decision wait time. This iterative process (1) allows team members to build awareness of their local conditions and make their local conditions transparent and visible to the rest of the team; (2) provides a feedback mechanism that indicates the engagement potential of each team member and the team, as well as a trigger or nudge toward moving to higher levels of engagement; (3) leads to the alignment of expectations and synchronicity of potential engagement levels. (shrink)

This paper describes an exploratory comparative study of knowledge workers and their challenges in high tech global project teams. More specifically we focus on the tension between perceived collocation and actual geographical distributed project work as a function of: (1) the demand to distribute and shift attention in multi-teaming, (2) virtuality i.e. number of virtual teams participants engage in, (3) the continuous adjustment and re-adjustment to new places they perform their activity, and (4) the collaboration technologies they use. We present (...) the methodology for data collection that included semi-structured interviews, surveys, and on site shadowing of the project participants, and discuss the findings from the data analysis. The study is based on the bricks-bits-interaction framework. It is at the intersection of the design of physical spaces, i.e., bricks; rich digital information and collaboration technology (ICT) content, mobile devices and network infrastructures, i.e., bits, and emergent work practices, process, and new ways people behave in communicative events using the affordances of ICT augmented physical, virtual spaces and digital content, i.e., interaction. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the 150th birthday of the mathematician Felix Klein. On this occasion, we present papers of Klein's Habilitation and give a commentary on them. They have not been analyzed until now. Especially, we have a look at some aspects which concern Klein's broader view on sciences.