According to the objection raised by Fodor and Lepore, inferentialism is untenable because it cannot provide a distinction between meaning-constitutive and ‘utterly contingent’ inferences. As they argue, without the distinction, the meanings of expressions cannot be shared and, without the shared meanings, the successfulness of communication cannot be explained. In other words, without the distinction, inferentialism becomes committed to holism. The aim of this paper is to show that if we understand communication in terms of the (...) coordination of actions, then partial sharing of meanings, i.e. sharing of contextually relevant aspects of meanings, is a sufficient requirement for communication to be successful. As I argue, if we accept such a view of communication, then inferentialism can explain the successfulness of communication without relying on the notion of shared meanings and so it can navigate the muddy waters of holism. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the concept of ‘shared meaning’, and the relationship between a shared understanding of signs within an animal social group and the Umwelten of individuals within the group. I explore the concept of the ‘Total Umwelt’, as described by Tønnesen, (2003), and use examples from the traditional ethology literature to demonstrate how semiotic principles can not only be applied, but underpin the observations made in animal social biology. Traditionally, neo-Darwinian theories of evolution concentrate on (...) ‘fitness’ or an organism’s capacity to survive and reproduce in its own environmental niche. However, this process also relies on underlying signs and sign processes, which are often over-looked in traditional ethology and behavioural ecology. Biosemiotics, however, places the emphasis on sign process, with signs and signals comprising a semiosphere. Significantly, whilst the semiosphere is formulated as physical phenomena, specifically energetic and material signs which can be detected and transmitted as signals from one individual to another, it is the Umwelten of living organisms which give those signals meaning. Further, two or more Umwelten can merge, giving rise to a ‘Total Umwelt’, which facilitates shared meaning of signs between two or more individuals. Across and within generations, this gives rise to cultural interpretation of signs within populations. I argue this is the fundamental basis for emergent group properties in social species, or indeed in solitary living species where individuals interact to mate, defend territories or resources, or in raising altricial young. I therefore discuss a fusion of traditional behavioural ecology- based theory with semiotics, to examine the phenomenon of ‘shared meaning’ in animal social groups. (shrink)

I argue that the study of variability rather than invariance should head the reading research agenda, and that strong claims of orthographic are unwarranted. I also expand briefly on Frost's assertion that an efficient orthography must represent sound and meaning, by considering writing systems as dual-purpose devices that must provide decipherability for novice readers and automatizability for the expert.

Elizabeth Bounds and Tyler Roberts press for the inclusion of critical voices that "hegemonic" discourse seems to exclude, but the polarity is less marked than they suggest. The newly assertive voices of minority communities criticize social practices not from some alien cultural perspective, but in the name of such broadly shared American values as equality, inclusion, and freedom. They not only expose the power relations that determine the distribution of social goods, but they also exemplify the practice of social (...) criticism by which the contours of shared understanding are regularly redefined. However, because the incorporation of local values is not an additive process, the elements that constitute the cultural synthesis can never be expected to achieve equal standing, and the success of the synthesis cannot properly be judged by that standard. (shrink)

According to philosophical orthodoxy, the parties to moral or legal disputes genuinely disagree only if their uses of key normative terms in the dispute express the same meaning. Recently, however, this orthodoxy has been challenged. According to an influential alternative view, genuine moral and legal disagreements should be understood as metalinguistic negotiations over which meaning a given term should have. In this paper, we argue that the shared meaning view is motivated by much deeper considerations than its recent critics (...) recognize, and that much would be lost in opting for the explanation of normative disputes as metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

This article considers the results of a global survey into quality terminology, which suggested that quality professionals are not making use of their own standards. Discussion of quality is located in the context of partnership and networks.

. The management of ethics within organisations typically occurs within a problem-solving frame of reference. This often results in a reactive, problem-based and externally induced approach to managing ethics. Although basing ethics management interventions on dealing with and preventing current and possible future unethical behaviour are often effective in that it ensures compliance with rules and regulations, the approach is not necessarily conducive to the creation of sustained ethical cultures. Nor does the approach afford (mainly internal) stakeholders the opportunity to (...) be co-designers of the organisations ethical future. The aim of this paper is to present Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as an alternative approach for developing a shared meaning of ethics within an organisation with a view to embrace and entrench ethics, thereby creating a foundation for the development of an ethical cul- ture over time. A descriptive case study based on an application of AI is used to illustrate the utility of AI as a way of thinking and doing to precede and complement problem-based ethics management systems and interventions. (shrink)

Use theories of meaning (UTMs) seem ill-equipped to accommodate the intuition that ignorant but deferential speakers use natural kind terms (e.g. 'zinc') and technical expression (e.g. 'credit default swap') with the same meanings as the experts do. After all, their use deviates from the experts', and if use determines meaning, a deviant use ordinarily would determine a deviant meaning. Yet the intuition is plausible and advocates of UTMs believe it can be accommodated. I examine Gilbert Harman's and Paul Horwich's (...) views, and argue that they do not offer a satisfactory reconciliation of the intuition with the theory. I propose an accommodation based on a novel account of semantic deference, and show that it is consistent with UTMs that a speaker may use a word with a certain meaning without fully or adequately knowing it. (shrink)

This paper proposes three principles for the ethical design of online social environments aiming to minimise the unintended harms caused by users while interacting online, specifically by enhancing the users’ awareness of the moral load of their interactions. Such principles would need to account for the strong mediation of the digital environment and the particular nature of user interactions: disembodied, asynchronous, and ambiguous intent about the target audience. I argue that, by contrast to face to face interactions, additional factors make (...) it more difficult for users to exercise moral sensitivity in an online environment. An ethics for social media user interactions is ultimately an ethics of human relations mediated by a particular environment; hence I look towards an enactive inspired ethics in formulating principles for human interactions online to enhance or at least do not hinder a user’s moral sensitivity. This enactive take on social media ethics supplements classical moral frameworks by asking us to focus on the relations established through the interactions and the environment created by those interactions. (shrink)

Shared Content as Speaker Meaning Cappelen and Lepore have recently emphasised the significance of a minimal notion of perfectly shared content for pragmatic theories. This paper argues for a similar notion, but assumes that a satisfactory defence cannot be achieved along the lines of the existing debate between Minimalism and Contextualism. Rather, it is necessary to consistently distinguish two functional domains: the subjective processing domain and the interpersonal domain of communication, each with its own kind of utterance meaning. (...) I will argue that it is the mutually recognised content of the speaker's overt commitment that should be identified as ‘speaker meaning’. Diverging from the Gricean tradition, it is conventionally restricted, but genuinely pragmatic. Functional considerations show that it is, moreover, unnecessary to include further elements in ‘speaker meaning’. The distinction between two notions of utterance meaning with very different characteristics allows us to integrate the assumption of perfect sharing, which explains people's trust in communication, and the subjectivity of the hearer's inferences into a coherent and powerful model. (shrink)

This essay explores aesthetics, affect, and educational politics through the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière. It contextualizes and contrasts the theoretical valences of their ethical and democratic projects through their shared critique of Kant. It then puts Rancière's notion of dissensus to work by exploring it in relation to a social movement and hunger strike organized for educational justice in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. This serves as a context for understanding how educational provisions are linked to the (...) aesthetic distribution of perception within the neoliberal city. It also serves as a powerful example of how these orders of perception are resisted and subverted at the local level by aesthetic and affective means. Through the Little Village hunger strike the essay argues that while Rancière allows us to recognize the aesthetic dimensions of the political, he falls short in addressing tactical and/or affective considerations. The essay concludes by seeking to extend the critical efficacy of Rancière's dissensus through a rendering of tactical affect within Deleuzian metaphysics. (shrink)

Sharing on social media has become a daily routine for millions of users worldwide. Sharing transforms the experience of international migration as it enables migrants to maintain social relations and adapt to a new socioeconomic environment. But what does the term “sharing” mean for migrants active on Facebook? What are the contemporary meanings of sharing encouraged by Facebook’s affordances? This paper explores individual sharing strategies on Facebook among Polish migrants in Germany and the UK. On the basis of the (...) material collected through in-depth interviews (N=17) with Poles who have settled in Germany and the UK, it is proposed that the contemporary meaning of sharing has five dimensions: commercial, altruistic, social, connective and addictive. Different compositions of these dimensions can be found in most sharing practices on social media. Following a critique of commercial sharing on social media, it is further established that selling and other profit-driven activities are rather well recognized by the interviewees. However, some of them engage in commercial sharing with no direct selling intention. The article emphasizes that sharing practices help Polish migrants adapt to their bicultural reality in Germany and the UK. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 2 Seiten: 211-260.

The Human Genome Project and the related research and development activities have raised heated discussions around some very basic ethical and social issues. A much debated concern is that of justice in human genetic research and in possible applications, especially pertaining to questions of just benefit-sharing - who and based on what sort of argumentation has the right to require benefits arising from research and discoveries, and what can even be considered as benefits? In what follows I will be examining (...) and clarifying the notion of benefit-sharing by focusing on its justifications. I will argue for certain qualifications and limitations in using this concept in specific and universal contexts. (shrink)

We advocate an analysis of meaning that departs from the pragmatic slogan that “meaning is use”. However, in order to avoid common missteps, this claim is in dire need of qualification. We argue that linguistic meaning does not originate from language use as such; therefore we cannot base a theory of meaning only on use. It is important not to neglect the fact that language is ultimately reliant on non-linguistic factors. This might seem to oppose the aforementioned slogan, but it (...) will be made clear how this opposition is chimerical. We propose that meaning traces back to the relation between subjectivity and intersubjectivity, which is at the heart of the matter by inducing strong interdependency between intention and interpretation. But to base a full-fledged analysis of meaning in communicative dyads alone is also insufficient. What needs to be further acknowledged is that meaning sharing becomes regulated by the interactions of a community. This we call consensus and it is at play in framing all communicative acts. Hence arises a triadic structure – we call this the meaningsharing network. The main motivation behind this model is to capture that meaning is not “in the head”, nor is it autonomous of the individual members that constitute it. (shrink)

In this paper, I set an aspect of what it is to live a flourishing life against the backdrop of neo liberal trends that continue to influence educational policy across the globe. The view I set out is in sharp contrast to any narrow assumption that education’s main task is the measurement of high performing individuals who will thus contribute to an economically viable society. Instead, I explore and argue for a conception of what constitutes a flourishing life that is (...) embedded in a more pragmatist analysis of what education may be. The argument begins with developing the centrality of embodiment to aesthetic sensibility and goes on to suggest how collective understanding of this within a community could constitute a sense of performance and thus contribute to the educational aim of developing a full and flourishing life. The argument is that this way of seeing life could have implications for educational practice, the role of the teacher and could help to reconfigure how education is experienced by the young. (shrink)

What is it to know the meaning of a word? The traditional view is that it involves the possession of a concept that determines the extension of a word, with the concept corresponding to a single psychological state. Millikan criticizes this view, denying not only that concepts determine extensions but also that sharing a concept means sharing a psychological state. The purpose of this article is to defend a modified version of the traditional view. I argue that Millikan's claims do (...) not translate directly into a thesis about word meaning. Her arguments relate to an extra-linguistic approach to extension, which we can distinguish from a linguistically oriented notion of extension. (shrink)

Toward a Shared Metaphoric Meaning in Children's Discourse: The Role of Argumentation The text deals with the phenomenon of understanding and interpreting metaphoric expressions in children. Of the many metaphoric figures, one type was selected: the ‘so-called’ psychological-physical metaphors that illuminate a psychological experience by appealing to an event in the physical domain. The data consist of children's discussions in pairs, in which they make a joint interpretation of metaphors including a dual-function adjective, e.g., a hard person, a sweet (...) person, an empty person. A hundred and forty-four dialogues between peer dyads were recorded from three age groups : 6;6-7;6, 8;6-9;6, and 10;6-11;6. The children's task was to prepare an interpretation of metaphorical expressions for two television quiz shows, one for peers and one for young preschoolers. The research design was balanced for age, gender, and order of metaphoric interpretation in the two experimental variants. Following Quignard's model, we analyzed children's argumentation as a particular case of dialogical problem solving, whereby children had to understand the metaphoric meaning and convey it to the potential addressee. The results show an interesting dynamic in the argumentative orientation of the pro and the contra type, depending on the age of interlocutors. The frequency of metaphoric interpretations in opposition to those presented by the partner decreases with the children's age, but the frequency of compound proposals with the use of the partner's contribution increases. For the younger addressee, children most frequently interpret metaphors as descriptions of magical situations. (shrink)

Felicity Haynes earned Honours degrees in English and French literature from The University of Western Australia and completed her doctorate on reason and understanding at the University of Illinoi...

As is well known, the variable-sharing property (vsp) is, according to Anderson and Belnap, a necessary property of any relevant logic. In this paper, we shall consider two versions of the vsp, what we label the "weak vsp" (wvsp) and the "strong vsp" (svsp). In addition, the "no loose pieces property," a property related to the wvsp and the svsp, will be defined. Each one of these properties shall generally be characterized by means of a class of logical matrices. In (...) this way, any logic verified by an actual matrix in one of these classes has the property the class generally represents. Particular matrices (and so, logics) in each class are provided. (shrink)

This article identifies and compares meanings of wildfire risk mitigation for stakeholders in the Front Range of Colorado, USA. We examine the case of a collaborative partnership sponsored by government agencies and directed to decrease hazardous fuels in interface areas. Data were collected by way of key informant interviews and focus groups. The analysis is guided by the Circuit of Culture model in communication research. We found both shared and differing meanings between members of this partnership (the (...) ‘‘producers’’) and other stakeholders not formally in the partnership (the ‘‘consumers’’). We conclude that those promoting the partnership’s project to mitigate risk are primarily aligned with a discourse of scientific management. Stakeholders outside the partnership follow a discourse of community. We argue that failure to recognize and account for differences in the way risk mitigation is framed and related power dynamics could hamper the communicational efforts of the collaborative partnership and impact goals for fuels reduction. We recommend ways that both groups can capitalize on shared meanings and how agency managers and decision makers can build better working relationships with interface communities and other external stakeholders. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In the fifth space-time dimension of the journey, in that invisible dimension of meaning, one also simultaneously enters the dimension of narration, in a double track that makes the dialogic dimension, traveling, a distinctive trait of traveling, both inside and outside oneself. The journey then becomes the occasion for a reinterpretation of meaning, the place of its return, the space within which to get lost and find oneself in a different articulation of oneself and one’s identity, the forge, the alchemical (...) _atanor_, where to live profound upheaval of oneself within a narrative and dialogic consciousness that makes the travel companion, the traveler, the other the focus and direction of our haughty representations and of our most unfathomable inner worlds. Because no one can tell only himself. We will therefore try to make people understand the special connection that exists between travel and narration, present within a literary tradition that crosses times and places, crossing the Middle Ages with Geoffrey Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_ up to the most recent _Drive my Car_ by Murakami, in a common narrative and existential structure that unfolds precisely in the particularity of traveling together. Everything that happens to us while traveling becomes a form of narration that combines the lived experience of consciousness, the _Erlebnis_, the poetry of the word in expression, an expression of a deeper self that can manifest itself in its epiphany through the story of what we are while we travel, while we wander, while we walk in other places, with others, lost in walking on foot, by car or train, without space-time limits, in that way of flying over the world typical of _flânerie_. (shrink)

Due to the state of globalized clinical research, questions have been raised as to what, if any, benefits those who contribute to research should receive. One model for compensating research participants is “benefit sharing,” and the basic premise is that, as a matter of justice, those who contribute to scientific research should share in its benefits. While incorporated into several international documents for over two decades, benefit sharing has only been sparsely implemented. This analysis begins by addressing the concept of (...) benefit sharing, its historical development, and how it has been applied in the context of virus sharing for influenza research. The second portion of this analysis presents recommendations for ensuring benefit sharing. These recommendations are threefold: 1) an emphasis on social pressure, 2) the revision of international documents as means to ensure benefit sharing, and 3) greater collaboration between sponsor IRB and host country IRB. Because clinical research is a globalized industry, a global model will be proposed in the second that focuses on collaboration between the sponsor and host country. This collaboration is vital in order to ensure that proper forms of benefit sharing are accomplished as a matter of justice. (shrink)

Part of the task in studying human evolution is developing a deep understanding of what we share, and do not share, with other life, as a mammal, a primate, a hominin, and as members of the genus Homo. A key aspect of this last facet is gained via the examination of the genus Homo across the Pleistocene. By at least the later Pleistocene members of the genus Homo began to habitually insert shared meaning into and onto their world forming (...) one of the bases of contemporary human abilities to develop a distinctive human niche and human culture. Meaning-laden cultural dynamics constitute the core of a ubiquitous semiotic ecosystem, which in turn structures the architecture of the complex niches and niche construction processes that characterize humanity today. Here, I offer a summary of Pleistocene evolution of the genus Homo and an argument for when and how that extensive and distinctive capacities for shared meaning-making and a particularly dynamic niche construction emerged. (shrink)

In 'Joint Action and Development', Stephen Butterfill argues that if several agents' actions are driven by what he calls a "shared goal"—a certain pattern of goal-relations and expectations—then these actions constitute a joint action. This kind of joint action is sufficiently cognitively undemanding for children to engage in, and therefore has the potential to play a part in fostering their understanding of other minds. Part of the functional role of shared goals is to enable agents to choose means (...) that are appropriate to realising a goal with others rather than individually. By offering a counterexample, I show that the pattern of goal-relations and expectations specified by Butterfill cannot play this role. I then provide an appropriately conceptually and cognitively undemanding amendment with which the account can be saved. (shrink)

The idea of meaning plays, together with the notion of caring, a pivotal role in recent nursing theory, informing its approach to philosophy, research and practice. Unlike caring, however, it has received relatively little analytical attention – a fact that is surprising in view of the scepticism about meaning that is characteristic of much contemporary philosophy and social theory. This paper reviews the philosophical literature on meaning, highlighting sceptical currents in the Wittgensteinian corpus, neo‐behaviourism and poststructuralism. It also considers a (...) similar line of thought that has emerged in social theory, questioning the explanatory value of concepts such as ‘practice’, ‘culture’, ‘norms’, ‘tacit knowledge’, and ‘tradition’. All these perspectives suggest that there is something wrong with the common‐sense picture of a set of shared, implicit rules that account for our ability to understand and communicate; and they all point to an alternative picture which is naturalistic, materialist and causal, and which depicts ‘shared meaning’ as a rather mysterious quality, unable to explain the familiar regularities of verbal and nonverbal behaviour. In this picture, while the idea of meaning can be retained, it ceases to be something shared, and becomes something individual and idiosyncratic, a unique cluster of associations, concomitants, and other habits of thought. The paper closes with a brief interpretation of what the alternative implies for a research methodology in nursing. In particular, it proposes that certain well established approaches will have to be abandoned, and that qualitative strategies will have to be grounded in a rigorous scientific framework, rather than in techniques (such as phenomenology), which presuppose a misleading and inaccurate conception of what meaning is. (shrink)

Intensified and extensive data production and data storage are characteristics of contemporary western societies. Health data sharing is increasing with the growth of Information and Communication Technology platforms devoted to the collection of personal health and genomic data. However, the sensitive and personal nature of health data poses ethical challenges when data is disclosed and shared even if for scientific research purposes. With this in mind, the Science and Values Working Group of the COST Action CHIP ME ‘Citizen's Health (...) through public-private Initiatives: Public health, Market and Ethical perspectives’ identified six core values they considered to be essential for the ethical sharing of health data using ICT platforms. We believe that using this ethical framework will promote respectful scientific practices in order to maintain individuals’ trust in research. We use these values to analyse five ICT platforms and explore how emerging data sharing platforms are reconfiguring the data sharing experience from a range of perspectives. We discuss which types of values, rights and responsibilities they entail and enshrine within their philosophy or outlook on what it means to share personal health information. Through this discussion we address issues of the design and the development process of personal health data and patient-oriented infrastructures, as well as new forms of technologically-mediated empowerment. (shrink)

Shared Musical Lives makes the case for the epistemological and ethical significance of musical experience. Music can be a source of self-knowledge and self-expression, and hence reveal important dimensions of the self to others. This knowledge - of both self and of others - has a moral force as well. Shared musical experience can transform and establish new modes of being with others, cultivate virtues, and expand the moral imagination. The term sonification (which means translating data into non-verbal (...) audible tones) provides an organizing principle for the arguments in the book.Transposing the concept into a philosophical key, this book explores two forms of sonification: first, the process by which musical experience reveals dimensions of the self and relationships with others; and second, philosophical sonification, or the critical examination of philosophical concepts,arguments, and theories in view of what musical experience reveals. These two kinds of sonification are discussed specifically in the context of disability. In this book, author Licia Carlson brings the musical lives of people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities into the foreground in order to challenge and broaden existing conceptions of disability and music and provide new ways of thinking about the philosophies of music and disability. (shrink)

The idea of meaning plays, together with the notion of caring, a pivotal role in recent nursing theory, informing its approach to philosophy, research and practice. Unlike caring, however, it has received relatively little analytical attention – a fact that is surprising in view of the scepticism about meaning that is characteristic of much contemporary philosophy and social theory. This paper reviews the philosophical literature on meaning, highlighting sceptical currents in the Wittgensteinian corpus, neo‐behaviourism and poststructuralism. It also considers a (...) similar line of thought that has emerged in social theory, questioning the explanatory value of concepts such as ‘practice’, ‘culture’, ‘norms’, ‘tacit knowledge’, and ‘tradition’. All these perspectives suggest that there is something wrong with the common‐sense picture of a set of shared, implicit rules that account for our ability to understand and communicate; and they all point to an alternative picture which is naturalistic, materialist and causal, and which depicts ‘shared meaning’ as a rather mysterious quality, unable to explain the familiar regularities of verbal and nonverbal behaviour. In this picture, while the idea of meaning can be retained, it ceases to be something shared, and becomes something individual and idiosyncratic, a unique cluster of associations, concomitants, and other habits of thought. The paper closes with a brief interpretation of what the alternative implies for a research methodology in nursing. In particular, it proposes that certain well established approaches will have to be abandoned, and that qualitative strategies will have to be grounded in a rigorous scientific framework, rather than in techniques (such as phenomenology), which presuppose a misleading and inaccurate conception of what meaning is. (shrink)

This article explores the rhetoric, and mass mediation, of the national Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration ceremony, as broadcast on British television. I argue that the televised national ceremonies should be approached as an example of multi-genre epideictic rhetoric, working up meanings through a hybrid combination of genres, author/animators and modes. Epideictic rhetoric has often been depreciated as simply ceremonial ‘praise or blame’ speeches. However, given that the topics of praise/blame assume the existence of social norms, epideictic also acts to (...) presuppose and evoke common values, in general, and a collective recognition of shared social responsibilities, in particular. My methodology draws on the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, given, first, its central prominence in analysing argumentative strategies in discourse and, second, the ways it facilitates a reflexive ‘shuttling’ between text-discursive features, intertextual relations and wider contexts of society and history. Here, I examine how a catastrophic past is invoked in speech and evoked through image and music, in response to the demands that uncertainty of the future ‘places upon one’s conscience’. (shrink)

The concept of benefit sharing pertains to the act of giving something in return to the participants, communities, and the country that have participated in global health research or bioprospecting activities. One of the key concerns of benefit sharing is the ethical justifications or reasons to support the practice of the concept in global health research and bioprospecting. This article evaluates one of such ethical justifications and its meaning to benefit sharing, namely justice. We conducted a systematic review to map (...) the various principles of justice that are linked to benefit sharing and analysed their meaning to the concept of benefit sharing. Five principles of justice have been shown to be relevant in the nuances of benefit sharing in both global health research and bioprospecting. The review findings indicate that each of these principles of justice provides a different perspective for a different benefit sharing rationale. For example, commutative justice provides a benefit sharing rationale that is focused on fair exchange of benefits between research sponsors and communities. Distributive justice produces a benefit sharing rationale that is focused on improving the health needs of the vulnerable research communities. We have suggested that a good benefit sharing framework particularly in global health research would be more beneficial if it combines all the principles of justice in its formulation. Nonetheless, there is a need for empirical studies to examine the various principles of justice and their nuances in benefit sharing among stakeholders in global health research. (shrink)

The Human Being in History affirms the ontological dignity of the human being, arguing that the challenges posed by the twenty-first century are not just political, economic, and social, but existential and metaphysical. In the face of these challenges, philosophy must show how to confront issues in a new way: not as problems that admit technical resolution, but as questions which involve openness to meaning and which demand the exercise of freedom.

“An ethics report is a snapshot of a process taking place at various levels within a company and between its stakeholders.” Ethics reports can serve a number of purposes, and for large multinational companies they can provide an important tool for stakeholder management, as is illustrated in the case of Shell. Muel Kaptein and Johan Wempe both work for KPMG Ethics & Integrity Consulting and lecture in business ethics at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Both are involved (...) in the verification of the Shell Report. (shrink)

In vitro fertilization with reception of oocytes from partners allows lesbian mothers to share biological motherhood. The gestational mother receives an egg from her partner who becomes the genetic mother. This article examines the ethics of IVF with ROPA with a focus on the welfare of the woman and the resulting child, on whether ROPA qualifies as a “legitimate” medical therapy that falls within the goals of medicine, and on the meaning and value attributed to a biologically shared bond (...) between parents and child. We also contrast IVF with ROPA with egg donor IVF for heterosexual couples and intrafamilial live uterus transplantation with IVF, and show how Swedish legislation makes certain ways of sharing biological bonds out of place. In Sweden, IVF with ROPA is illegal, egg donor IVF for heterosexual couples is allowed and practiced as is sperm donor IVF for lesbians, and live uterus transplantation is performed within a research project. But is ROPA really ethically more problematic than these other cases? The article argues that IVF with ROPA gives rise to fewer ethical questions than does live uterus transplantation with IVF and, in some cases, egg donor IVF. (shrink)

Phenomenological sociology was founded at the beginning of 1930s by Alfred Schutz. His mundane phenomenology sought to combine impulses drawn from Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and Weber's action theory. It was made famous at the turn of 1960s and 1970s by Garfinkel's ethnomethodology and Berger & Luckmann's social constructionism. This paper deals with the notable accomplishments of Schutz and his followers and then proceeds to a shared shortcoming, which is that the phenomenological approach is unable to understand meaning in any (...) other way but as actors's knowledge. Therefore, phenomenological sociologists are forced to describe the actor's interpretations of meaning as transparent to the actor him/herself, even if they sometimes make heroic attempts to escape the limitations of the phenomenological conception. The limitation is apparent in Husserl's and Schutz's definition of meaning as a “reflective intentional act”, Garfinkel's use of the term “accounting” to refer to a signifying effect, and the way Berger and Luckmann describe their social theory as “sociology of knowledge”. Today, similar confusions are present in Michael Polanyi's “tacit knowledge”and in Giddens' structuration theory. (shrink)

By drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy of ontological relationality, this article explores what it means to be a ‘we’ in breast cancer. What are the characteristics—the extent and diversity—of couples’ relationally lived experiences of bodily changes in breast cancer? Through analyzing duo interviews with diagnosed women and their partners, four ways of sharing an embodied life are identified. (1) While ‘being different together’, partners have different, albeit connected kinds of experiences of breast cancer. (2) While ‘being there for you’, partners (...) take care of each other in mutually dependent ways. (3) While ‘being reconnected to you’, partners (re-)relate to each other through intimacy and sexuality. (4) While ‘being like you’, partners synchronize their embodied daily lives to one another, sometimes up to the point that the self cannot be distinguished from the other anymore. These ways reveal that being a ‘we’ involves complex affective, bodily encounters in which the many fault lines that both separate partners into individual selves and join them together as a unity are continuously reshaped and negotiated. Being a ‘we’ may be understood as something we have to do. Therefore, in being true to the legacy of Nancy, we argue at the end of this article for a sensible praxis of sharing a life and body, particularly in breast cancer. (shrink)

This book present interdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities by connecting seemingly disparate sources through a sensitivity to endangered human values. It links reflections on the contemporary relationship between art and technology in a post-modern context, seeing art in terms of crossing boundaries and exploring virtuality. It deals with the consequences of economics colonising other disciplines, in terms of the processes by which the social becomes the economic. Using Jantsch''s evolutionary paradigm, the concept of self-transcendence is seen as (...) crucial for the understanding of human beings and their social systems. Incorporating recent thinking from the natural sciences, the learning process can be conceived as the life and activity of all complex systems, including those once conceived as organisms, machines, cultures or economies. Without the societal embrace of scientific and technological development no collective or individual meaning can be assigned to the production of new knowledge. The book seeks to recognise the point where a collective learning process becomes the heart of productivity, and where the shift from the hegemony of material labour to immaterial labour becomes fundamental. The author brings new understandings of art, the social, and technology together, based on the idea that history is not a story told in separate physical, social and spiritual spaces and that the most fundamental problem of today is how to find some shared meaning in a fractured world. The author analyses, at a global level, the process of the co-production of scientific and social order, of culture and technology, of life sciences and economic and political regimes. It rightly identifies the rise of the role of knowledge and the move of capital into life sciences as a new stage in the history of capitalism: what we can qualify as cognitive capitalism or biocapitalism. In this new era of capitalism, what is being manufactured and sold are not just tangible and non-tangible goods, whose increasing importance, as the author shows, poses unsurmountable theoretical problems to the theoretical apparatus of economic science. The increasing mercantilisation of the world appears at the same time as a bio-power, i.e. a set of instruments creating and controlling different forms of life, forms of communication, standards of socialisation, education, the individual and collective imaginary, etc. More fundamentally, the encounter of life sciences and the information technology integrates and subjects the most essential mechanisms of biological and social reproduction to the logic of capital valorization. To understand the complexity of these changes and the ethical and philosophical questions that the development of technology and sciences poses to the future of mankind one must break through the disciplinary barriers delineating different disciplines in social sciences and those separating social sciences from natural sciences. Professor Matko Mestrovic manages to tackle this challenge not only because of his impressive and masterful knowledge of different disciplines in the social and natural sciences, but he does it also owing to his capacity for theoretical elaboration that allows him to lay the foundations of a new transdisciplinary paradigm. This is why his work can raise the awareness of the general public on two issues: on a global and profound vision of the challenges posed by the new millennium; and on the need for a radical theoretical innovation bringing into question the disciplinary certitudes in develop a social science able to better understand the movement and the ambiguity of history. - Carlo Vercellone, Universite de Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne Mestrovic provides a unique insight into the often forgotten relation between economics on the one hand and arts and culture on the other, demonstrating that these adomains function as a total social facticity and not as separate, entirely independent elements thereof. In doing so he is dispelling the illusions about the disciplinary self-containdness of individual forms of knowledge and is relying on those paradigms of contemporary scientific thought whose aepistemiological programs are based on close cooperation and aopening up and not on the persuasion about one''s own positions and dispositions. - Prof. dr. Rade Kalanj, Redovni profesor na Odjelu za sociologiju. (shrink)

This article uses diary data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey to compare by gender total child care time calculated in the measurements of main activity, main or secondary activity, and total time spent in the company of children. It also offers an innovative gender comparison of relative time spent in the activities that constitute child care, child care as double activity, and time with children in sole charge. These measures give a fuller picture of (...) total time commitment to children and how men and women spend that time than has been available in previous time use analyses. The results indicate that compared to fathering, mothering involves not only more overall time commitment but more multitasking, more physical labor, a more rigid timetable, more time alone with children, and more overall responsibility for managing care. These gender differences in the quantity and nature of care apply even when women work full-time. (shrink)

Do people share their feelings of guilt with others and, if so, what are the reasons for doing this or not doing this? Even though the social sharing of negative emotional experiences, such as regret, has been extensively studied, not much is known about whether people share feelings of guilt and why. We report three studies exploring these questions. In Study 1, we re-analysed data about sharing guilt experiences posted on a social website called “Yahoo Answers”, and found that people (...) share intrapersonal as well as interpersonal guilt experiences with others online. Study 2 found that the main motivations of sharing guilt (compared with the sharing of regret) were “venting”, “clarification and meaning”, and “gaining advice”. Study 3 found that people were more likely to share experiences of interpersonal guilt and more likely to keep experiences of intrapersonal guilt to themselves. Together, these studies contribute to a further understanding of the social sharing of the emotion guilt. (shrink)