When 47-year-old Simba Abalo, an unemployed retired soldier in Lomé, Togo, found out that he had AIDS in September 2007, he was unable to receive government-supplied antiretroviral drugs: “CAMEG [the state’s central medicines purchasing organization],” he said, “told me they were not taking any new cases for six months because they had run out of drugs.Stocks of antiretrovirals had become depleted after the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria suspended part of its grant to Togo in 2006 and (...) failed to approve a new grant request in 2007, reportedly because of oversight irregularities. “Even if they had the drugs,” said Abalo, “I could not have paid more than US$4 a month since I had just lost my job as a security guard earning US$70 a month.”. (shrink)

The time of art: Negri and Virno on kairòs, language, and creation. Negri and Virno aim to establish a concept of art that demonstrates a difference within a contemporary society that they see as completely dominated by the market. A time regime presenting the spheres of work and non-work as separate, structures human life. Yet in fact, work today stretches beyond the borders of both spheres. Labor power consists mainly in creativity, communication, and cooperation. Virno and Negri state that a (...) market-oriented time regime that perpetuates a divide between labor time and non-labor time presents itself as a dismeasure. It attempts to objectively measure and structure something that is really a dynamic and intersubjective matter, namely the immaterial traits that are also potentially productive of life in general, and that are productive of art. When Negri and Virno call the work of art a singular mode of labor power, they imply that it deploys the elements of labor power in a manner that is different from market-oriented labor, that it exploits their capacity to produce life itself in a meaningful way. Yet neither Negri nor Virno puts forth a broad concept of art that embodies the potential that they attribute to it. This article aims to extend Negri’s and Virno’s proposals and present a conceptualization of the nature of the artwork that would posit the difference in relation to dismeasure of the market as Negri and Virno conceive it. (shrink)

Few disputes have dominated the discourse of analytic philosophy like the one between Rudolf Carnap and Willard Van Orman Quine. Centered originally on the issue of intensionality in the philosophy of logic and language — ultimately the import of the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements — their conflict came to concern the nature of post-foundational epistemology and its relation to ontology. Are we to follow Carnap and explicate the conditions of intersubjectively meaningful speech in a purely formal inquiry (...) that, taken by itself, refrains from underwriting any one such framework? Or are we to follow Quine and naturalize epistemology as an empirical inquiry into the conditions of theory acceptance and thus, perforce, acquiesce in ontological commitments? Perhaps not the least pressing question is whether there is any “cognitive” conflict at all between Carnapean reconstructionism and Quinean naturalism. (shrink)

This paper was presented at the First Conference of the ISSEI ‘Turning Points in History’, 26–30 September 1988. It belongs to Theme 1, ‘Comparative History of European Revolutions’.

Background: The Declaration of Helsinki, the World Medical Association’s statement of ethical guidelines regarding medical research, is published in the three official languages of the WMA: English, French and Spanish.Methods: A detailed comparison of the three official language versions was carried out to determine ways in which they differed and ways in which the wording of the three versions might illuminate the interpretation of the document.Results: There were many minor linguistic differences between the three versions. However, in paragraphs 1, 6, (...) 29, 30 and in the note of clarification to paragraph 29, there were differences that could be considered potentially significant in their ethical relevance.Interpretation: Given the global status of the Declaration of Helsinki and the fact that it is translated from its official versions into many other languages for application to the ethical conduct of research, the differences identified are of concern. It would be best if such differences could be eliminated but, at the very least, a commentary to explain any differences that are unavoidable on the basis of language or culture should accompany the Declaration of Helsinki. This evidence further strengthens the case for international surveillance of medical research ethics as has been proposed by the WMA. (shrink)

In this paper we present an executable approach to model interactions between agents that involve sensitive, privacy-related information. The approach is formal and based on deontic, epistemic and action logic. It is conceptually related to the Belief-Desire-Intention model of Bratman. Our approach uses the concept of sphere as developed by Waltzer to capture the notion that information is provided mostly with restrictions regarding its application. We use software agent technology to create an executable approach. Our agents hold beliefs about the (...) world, have goals and commitment to the goals. They have the capacity to reason about different courses of action, and communicate with one another. The main new ingredient of our approach is the idea to model information itself as an intentional agent whose main goal it is to preserve the integrity of the information and regulate its dissemination. We demonstrate our approach by applying it to an important process in the insurance industry: applying for a life insurance. In this paper we will: (1) describe the challenge organizational complexity poses in moral reasoning about informational relationships; (2) propose an executable approach, using software agents with reasoning capacities grounded in modal logic, in which moral constraints on informational relatio nships can be modeled and investigated; (3) describe the details of our approach, in which information itself is modeled as an intentional agent in its own right; (4) test and validate it by applying it to a concrete ‘hard case’ from the insurance industry; and (5) conclude that our approach upholds and offers potential for both research and practical application. (shrink)

Positive frequency dependent selection is a natural selection regime where the fitness of a phenotype increases with its frequency in the population. Examples can be typically found in the spread of disease tolerance strategies in a population. A characterizing feature of PFDS is that the focal allele may experience favorable selection only when it becomes more frequent in the population, while being selected against when it is rare. In this paper, by applying a solution concept from evolutionary game theory, we (...) hypothesize that the process of emergence of such alleles triggers selection for silence, where the emergence of alleles that can stay unexpressed for a period of time will be favored by selection forces. We illustrate our hypothesis using a mathematical model of a population of single locus diploid organisms with two alleles where a single mutant of an allele that experiences positive frequency dependent selection appears in a population where the other allele is a dominant. The model results show that the longer the silence interval of the new mutant before its expression, the better its chances of getting fixed in the population. However, this effect will be observable only to a certain limit after which further increase in the interval will not have an effect on the expected fixation rate. Two divergences from the simple scenario are also investigated: the nonsynchronous expression of the focal allele and its emergence in a spatial grid limited by a migration bottleneck. In all cases, it is shown that there is an evolutionary pressure inherent in the dynamics of positive frequency dependent selection on the genes to have a delayed expression. It is hypothesized that the regulation systems of such traits will be under selection for either internal silencing mechanisms or to be triggered by an external environmental condition. (shrink)

The impact of COVID-19 on chronic pain in non-infected vulnerable South American subjects is unknown. Healthcare workers are at increased risk for CP. During the pandemic, many HCWs with CP kept working. Knowing how cognition is affected by CP in these subjects is an important subject for work safety. The attention domain has a pivotal role in cognition. Previously, the Continuous Visual Attention Test was applied to detect specific attention deficits in fibromyalgia patients. The present investigation described CP prevalence in (...) non-infected Brazilian HCWs during the pandemic and assessed HCWs’ attentional performance with the aid of the CVAT. This study was carried out at a reference University Hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. HCWs of both sexes, aged 20 or older, were interviewed from August to December 2020. A 90-second version of the CVAT was performed. The average reaction time to correct responses and the respective intraindividual reaction time variability for correct responses to target was determined. Omission and commission errors were also calculated. Then, for each participant we calculated the Z-scores of the CVAT variables based on the distribution of CVAT performance of 211 healthy subjects. HCWs with Z-scores > 1.64 were classified as significantly impaired. From the 154 selected HCWs, 72 reported CP during the pandemic. Post hoc ANCOVAs showed that the average correct VRT was significantly higher in the CP group than in the non-CP group. The percentage of participants with impaired VRT performance was 30% in the CP group and 16% in the non-CP group. The difference between these two propositions reached significance. As VRT is associated with the sustained-attention subdomain, our data suggest that this subdomain is disrupted in the CP group. (shrink)

Contemporary neo-liberal society is ruled by the market. Davies, Chen and Lentin and Titley show that its objectification and categorization founds a competitive notion of agency that disables subjective construction of self and intersubjective understanding of the world. As the market's rules and norms are set by white patriarchy, its competitive paradigm structurally disadvantages others. Art too is objectified and categorized by neo-liberal institutions, equally embedded in white patriarchal market structures and severely limiting democratic public access to a diverse artistic (...) field, argue hooks, Mercer and Piper. Yet, Piper's artwork shows, art holds emancipatory potential. Defined as transforming experience, its ambiguity provides a structure for constituting agentic subjectivity and intersubjective signification processes, defying objective/objectifying market workings. Photography's specific qualities allow Piper to democratize access to the paradigm she proposes. Her artistic choices may thus found the potential to publicly construct a notion of aesthetic agency as resistance to the neo-liberal market. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap and W. V. Quine, two of the twentieth century's most important philosophers, corresponded at length—and over a long period of time—on matters personal, professional, and philosophical. Their friendship encompassed issues and disagreements that go to the heart of contemporary philosophic discussions. Carnap was a founder and leader of the logical positivist school. The younger Quine began as his staunch admirer but diverged from him increasingly over questions in the analysis of meaning and the justification of belief. That (...) they remained close, relishing their differences through years of correspondence, shows their stature both as thinkers and as friends. The letters are presented here, in full, for the first time. The substantial introduction by Richard Creath offers a lively overview of Carnap's and Quine's careers and backgrounds, allowing the nonspecialist to see their writings in historical and intellectual perspective. Creath also provides a judicious analysis of the philosophical divide between them, showing how deep the issues cut into the discipline, and how to a large extent they remain unresolved. (shrink)

Family involvement in healthcare decision-making for competent patients occurs to varying degrees in many communities around the world. There are different attitudes about who should make treatment decisions, how and why. Legal and professional ethics codes in most jurisdictions reflect and support the idea that competent patients should be enabled to make their own treatment decisions, even if others, including their healthcare professionals, disagree with them. This way of thinking contrasts with some cultural norms that put more emphasis on the (...) family as a decision-making entity, in some circumstances to the exclusion of a competent patient. Possible tensions may arise between various combinations of patient, family members and healthcare professionals, and healthcare professionals must tread a careful path in navigating family involvement in the decision-making process. These tensions may be about differences of opinion about which treatment option is best and/or on who should have a say or influence in the decision-making process. While some relevant cultural, legal and policy considerations vary from community to community, there are ethical issues that healthcare professionals need to grapple with in balancing the laws and professional codes on decision-making and the ethical principle of respecting patients and their autonomy. This paper will highlight and propose that a partial resolution to these issues may lie in relational understandings of autonomy, which in principle justify interventions by healthcare professionals and family that support patients in decision-making. (shrink)

Moral behaviour, based on social norms, is commonly regarded as a hallmark of humans. Hitherto, humans are perceived to be the only species possessing social norms and to engage in moral behaviour. There is anecdotal evidence suggesting their presence in chimpanzees, but systematic studies are lacking. Here, we examine the evolution of human social norms and their underlying psychological mechanisms. For this, we distinguish between conventions, cultural social norms and universal social norms. We aim at exploring whether chimpanzees possess evolutionary (...) precursors of universal social norms seen in humans. Chimpanzees exhibit important preconditions for their presence and enforcement: tolerant societies, well-developed social-cognitive skills and empathetic competence. Here, we develop a theoretical framework for recognizing different functional levels of social norms and distinguish them from mere statistical behavioural regularities. Quasi social norms are found where animals behave functionally moral without having moral emotions. In proto social norms, moral emotions might be present but cannot be collectivized due to the absence of a uniquely human psychological trait, i.e. shared intentionality. Human social norms, whether they are universal or cultural, involve moral emotions and are collectivized. We will discuss behaviours in chimpanzees that represent potential evolutionary precursors of human universal social norms, with special focus on social interactions involving infants. We argue that chimpanzee infants occupy a special status within their communities and propose that tolerance towards them might represent a proto social norm. Finally, we discuss possible ways to test this theoretical framework. (shrink)

Ideals (or ideal values) help people to navigate in social life. They indicate at a very fundamental level what people are concerned about, what they strive for, and what they want to be affiliated with. Transferring this to a leader-follower analysis, our first study (n = 306) confirms that followers' identification and satisfaction with their leaders are stronger, the more leaders match followers' ideal leader values. Study 2 (n = 244) extends the perspective by introducing the novel concept of counterideals (...) (i. e., how an ideal leader should not be) as a second, non-redundant point of reference. Results confirm that a leader's match on ideal and on counter-ideal values have independent effects in that both explain unique variance in followers' identification and satisfaction with their leader. Study 3 (n = 136) replicates the previous results in an experimental scenario study and provides evidence for the proposed causal direction of the underlying process. We conclude that counter-ideal values might be an additional point of reference that people use to triangulate targets above and beyond ideal values and discuss the implications of our findings for value research and management. (shrink)

Reductionism as a scientific methodology has been extraordinarily successful in biology. However, recent developments in molecular biology have shown that reductionism is seriously inadequate in dealing with the mind-boggling complexity of integrated biological systems. This title presents an appropriate balance between science and philosophy and covers traditional philosophical treatments of reductionism as well as the benefits and shortcomings of reductionism in particular areas of science. Discussing the issue of reductionism in the practice of medicine it takes into account the holistic (...) and integrative aspects that require the context of the patient in his biological and psychological entirety. The emerging picture is that what first seems like hopeless disagreements turn out to be differences in emphasis. Although genes play an important role in biology, the focus on genetics and genomics has often been misleading. The consensus view leads to pluralism: both reductionst methods and a more integrative approach to biological complexity are required, depending on the questions that are asked. * An even balance of contributions from scientists and philosophers of science - representing a unique interchange between both communities interested in reductionism. (shrink)

In the human sciences, experimental research is used to establish causal relationships. However, the extrapolation of these results to the target population can be problematic. To facilitate extrapolation, we propose to use the statistical technique Latent Class Regression Analysis in combination with the analogical reasoning theory for extrapolation. This statistical technique can identify latent classes that differ in the effect of X on Y. In order to extrapolate by means of analogical reasoning, one can characterize the latent classes by a (...) combination of features, and then compare these features to features of the target. (shrink)

The South African government’s COVID-19 pandemic risk mitigation strategies significantly limited social contact, which necessitated a novel approach to existing face-to-face career guidance practices. The Grade 9 Career Guidance Project, originally developed as a group-based career development intervention, required radical adaptation into a self-directed, manualized format to offer career guidance to Grade 9 learners from low-income communities amid a global pandemic. The adaptation and continuation of the project was deemed essential as secondary school learners in low-income communities have limited career (...) guidance support. Furthermore, a close collaboration with the teachers at eight resource-constrained South African secondary schools was vital for successful implementation. To assess the success of the adaptation to a self-directed format, a mixed-methods design was employed, and Life Orientation teachers’ evaluative feedback was solicited. Favorable quantitative results were obtained; majority of teachers agreed that learners enjoyed the booklet and that it was deemed an adequate substitute to the previous contact-based format of the Career Guidance Project. This was also confirmed by the qualitative findings revealing teachers’ satisfaction with the booklet’s content, specifically that the booklet is complementary to the Life Orientation curriculum. Qualitative findings identified specific contextual barriers that contributed to some learners struggling to use the booklet optimally. The results suggest that it is feasible and acceptable to implement a self-directed career guidance intervention among secondary school learners amid a global pandemic. Teachers recommended ways to integrate the booklet, resources, and contact sessions as a preferred way forward. These findings have important implications for similar resource-constrained settings that may not have readily access to in-person career guidance and counseling human development. (shrink)

Background: Issues concerning legislation and regulation with respect to the role of nurses in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide gave the Minister for Health reason to commission a study of the role of nurses in medical end-of-life decisions in hospitals, home care and nursing homes.Aim: This paper reports the findings of a study of the role of nurses in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, conducted as part of a study of the role of nurses in medical end-of-life decisions. The findings for hospitals, (...) home care and nursing homes are described and compared.Method: A questionnaire was sent to 1509 nurses, employed in 73 hospitals, 55 home care organisations and 63 nursing homes. 1179 responses were suitable for analysis. The questionnaire was pilot-tested among 106 nurses, with a response rate of 85%.Results: In 37.0% of cases, the nurse was the first person with whom patients discussed their request for euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide. Consultation between physicians and nurses during the decision-making process took place quite often in hospitals and nursing homes and less frequently in home care situations . In some cases , nurses administered the euthanatics.Conclusions: The results show substantial differences between the intramural sector and the extramural sector , which are probably linked to the organisational structure of the institutions. Consultation between physicians and nurses during the decision-making process needs improvement, particularly in home care. Some nurses had administered euthanatics, although this task is by law exclusively reserved to physicians. (shrink)