This chapter describes how philosophical theorizing about justice can be connected with empirical research in the social sciences. We begin by drawing on some received distinctions between ideal and non-ideal approaches to theorizing justice along several different dimensions, showing how non-ideal approaches are needed to address normative aspects of real-world problems and to provide practical guidance. We argue that there are advantages to a transitional approach to justice focusing on manifest injustices, including the fact that it enables us to set (...) aside some reasonable disagreements about justice. The ‘bottom-up’ approach we advocate, for which we borrow Wolff’s term ‘real-world political philosophy’, is an empirically-informed normative analysis that attends to specific, identifiable injustices, and thus is partial, though not isolationist. We illustrate our approach by considering how different models of the nature of disability suggest different kinds of remedy for injustices faced by persons living with disabilities. We reflect on the nature and significance of vulnerabilities, and we assess the role of public opinion in normative theorizing, suggesting a particular significance for the opinions and experiences of marginalized groups. We finally reflect on the relevance of European legal and institutional frameworks for theorizing justice in Europe. (shrink)

The rise of multi-stakeholder institutions (MIs) involving the ultra-processed food (UPF) industry has raised concerns among food and public health scholars, especially with regards to enhancing the legitimacy and influence of transnational food corporations in global food governance (GFG) spaces. However, few studies have investigated the governance composition and characteristics of MIs involving the UPF industry, nor considered the implications for organizing global responses to UPFs and other major food systems challenges. We address this gap by conducting a network analysis (...) to map global MIs involving the UPF industry, drawing data from web sources, company reports, business and market research databases, and academic and grey literature. We identified 45 such global food system MIs. Of these, executives from the UPF industry or affiliated interest groups held almost half (_n_ = 263, or 43.8%) of the total 601 board seat positions. Executives from a small number of corporations, especially Unilever (_n_ = 20), Nestlé (_n_ = 17), PepsiCo Inc (_n_ = 14), and The Coca-Cola Company (_n_ = 13) held the most board seat positions, indicating centrality to the network. Board seats of these MIs are dominated by executives from transnational corporations (_n_ = 431, or 71.7%), high-income countries (_n_ = 495, or 82.4%), and four countries (United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) (_n_ = 350, or 58.2%) in particular. This study shows that MIs involving the UPF industry privilege the interests of corporations located near exclusively in the Global North, draw legitimacy through affiliations with multi-lateral agencies, civil society groups and research institutions, and represent diverse corporate interests involved in UPF supply chains. Corporate-anchored multi-stakeholderism, as a form of GFG governance, raises challenges for achieving food systems transformation, including the control and reduction of UPFs in human diets. (shrink)

Libraries provide access to large amounts of library metadata. Unfortunately, many libraries only offer textual interfaces for searching and browsing their holdings. Visualizations provide simpler, faster, and more efficient ways to navigate, search and study large quantities of metadata. This paper presents GlamMap, a visualization tool that displays library metadata on an interactive, computer-generated geographic map. We provide detailed discussion of how GlamMap benefits the work of librarians and researchers. We show how geographic representations help librarians to perform tasks such (...) as collection assessment and how geographic information helps researchers to identify important scientific resources. (shrink)

Background: We aimed to determine the smallest changes in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) scores in the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire core 30 and the Brain Cancer Module (QLQ-BN20), which could be considered as clinically meaningful in brain cancer patients. Materials and methods: World Health Organisation performance status (PS) and mini-mental state examination (MMSE) were used as clinical anchors appropriate to related subscales to determine the minimal clinically important differences (MCIDs) in HRQoL (...) change scores (range 0-100) in the QLQ-C30 and QLQ-BN20. A threshold of 0.2 standard deviation (SD) (small effect) was used to exclude anchor-based MCID estimates considered too small to inform interpretation. Results: Based on PS, our findings support the following integer estimates of the MCID for improvement and deterioration, respectively: physical (6, 9), role (14, 12), and cognitive functioning (8, 8); global health status (7, 4(star)), fatigue (12, 9), and motor dysfunction (4(star), 5). Anchoring with MMSE, cognitive functioning MCID estimates for improvement and deterioration were (11, 2(star)) and for communication deficit were (9, 7). Estimates with asterisks were <0.2 SD and were excluded from our MCID range of 5-14. Conclusion: These estimates can help clinicians evaluate changes in HRQoL over time, assess the value of a health care intervention and can be useful in determining sample sizes in designing future clinical trials. (shrink)

This article starts with a case outlining ethical challenges encountered in participatory action research (PAR) on vaccine hesitancy in rural India during Covid-19. Community researchers were recruited by a not-for-profit organisation, with the aim of both discovering the reasons for vaccine hesitancy and encouraging take-up. This raised issues about the roles and responsibilities of local researchers in their own communities, where they might be blamed for adverse reactions to vaccination. They and their mentor struggled with balancing societal protection against individual (...) rights to make choices. These themes are explored in two commentaries discussing the difficulties in balancing ethics in public health (prioritising societal benefits), social research (protecting participants from harm and respecting their rights not to be involved) and participatory research practices (maximising democratic participation and decision-making). As discussed in the first commentary, often these cohere, but tensions can arise. The second commentary also raises the issue of epistemic justice, questioning the extent to which the villagers could have a say in the design, implementation and interpretation of the research, and the dangers of not hearing the voices and arguments of people who reject vaccination. The case and commentaries highlight the complexities of PAR and additional challenges in a public health context. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has suggested that compassion can occur at the organizational level. The definition of “organizational compassion” is particularly problematic because organizations have multiple reasons for engaging in actions that then have effects on various stakeholders. A number of questions regarding organizational compassion thus merit theoretical attention: Are all organizations capable of demonstrating caring and compassion? What factors enable or constrain organizational compassion? In a move toward a more complete understanding of compassion at the organizational level, a continuum of organizational (...) compassion is developed, considering both positive and negative organizational deviance. As factors across multiple levels of analysis may influence where firms would fall on this compassion continuum, examples of enablers and constraints to organizational compassion are also considered. (shrink)

BackgroundAlthough a large number of clinical trials on interventions demonstrating efficacy (or lack thereof) are conducted annually, much of this evidence is not accessible to scientists and clinicians.ObjectivesWe aimed to determine the publication rate of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) trials that have been registered in clinical trial registries, and the factors associated with publication.MethodsTrials, completed on January 15, 2015, were identified via the US National Institutes of Health clinical trials registry, the European Union Clinical Trials Register and the WHO International (...) Clinical Trials Registry Platform. A systematic search for publications (published by the end of March 2018) related to each of the registered trials were then performed.ResultsFour hundred and thirty-eight of 1982 potentially eligible trials were included. Only 34% of interventional trials were registered prior to initiation, 9% were registered within 2 months of starting and 20% after trial completion. Of the 438 included trials, 72% had generated peer-reviewed publications, while an additional 7% had disseminated results in some other form (such as on the trial database), 26 months after trial completion. Randomisation of a trial was the only factor individually associated with publication, in logistic regression analysis (p < 0.001). Intervention type, university as sponsor and study registration prior to completion were factors that influenced the time to publication, using Cox regression (p < 0.001).ConclusionsThis study underscores the importance of timely and accurate publication and dissemination of trial results, in order to avoid the potential waste of resources and to ensure research integrity and patient safety. We suggest that authors and journal editors adhere to conditions set out by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and that more diligent data sharing is encouraged through prospective trial registration and trial reporting websites. (shrink)

In this interview with Jan Hendrik van den Berg, the Dutch phenomenologist and psychiatrist addresses the origins of his work, his most significant influences, and the purpose of metabletic phenomenology in the modern age. In the course of the interview. Dr. Van den Berg provides a basic overview of his work, and highlights the central finding of his metabletic analyses: a loss of wonder before nature, which results from the more fundamental loss of genuine spirituality in the modern world.

In this paper, I develop an ecological-enactive perspective on the role rules play in linguistic behaviour. I formulate and motivate the hypothesis that metalinguistic reflexivity – our ability to talk about talking – is constitutive of linguistic normativity. On first sight, this hypothesis might seem to fall prey to a regress objection. By discussing the work of Searle, I show that this regress objection originates in the idea that learning language involves learning to follow rules from the very start. I (...) propose an ecological-enactive response to the regress objection. The key move is to deny that language learning consists initially in learning rules. A child first engages in regular communicative behaviour, by learning first-order linguistic skills, and then retroactively interprets her own behaviour in normative metalinguistic terms, i.e., as being guided by rules by relying on reflexive or second-order linguistic skills. On this view, metalinguistic reflexivity enables regulation of already regular communicative behaviour, and thereby constitutes linguistic normativity. Finally, I argue that linguistic rules are resources: they are available to participants in order to (re)negotiate properties of situated language behaviour and thereby reorganize linguistic practices. The account developed in this paper thus allows us to understand the constitutive role of metalinguistic reflexivity for linguistic normativity without falling prey to the regress objection. (shrink)

Much clinical and ethnographic evidence suggests that humans, like many other organisms, are selected to avoid close inbreeding because of the fitness costs of inbreeding depression. The proximate mechanism of human inbreeding avoidance seems to be precultural, and to involve the interaction of genetic predispositions and environmental conditions. As first suggested by E. Westermarck, and supported by evidence from Israeli kibbutzim, Chinese sim-pua marriage, and much convergent ethnographic and clinical evidence, humans negatively imprint on intimate associates during a critical period (...) of early childhood.There is also much evidence that, like other social animals, humans do not seek to maximize outbreeding, but rather to maintain an optimal balance between outbreeding and inbreeding.Closeinbreeding reduces fitness through inbreeding depression, butsomeinbreeding brings the benefits of nepotism. For simple, stateless, horticultural societies, the optimal balance seems to be achieved by a combination of precultural inbreeding avoidance of relatives with anr≤·25 and cultural rules of preferential marriage with kin withr≥·25. Adjustment of the coefficient of inbreeding to other ecological settings seems to be largely cultural. An interactive model of “culture in nature” is presented, in which culture is seen as coevolving with genes to produce the maxiniization of individual inclusive fitness. (shrink)

The empirical-transcendental debate in philosophy of technology, as debates go, took a turn toward the counterposing of the two perspectives, ‘empirical’-pragmatic-pragmatist versus ‘transcendental’-critical. Postphenomenology aligns itself with the former standpoint, and it is in this spirit that commentators have criticized it for its too-instrumentalist stance and lack of overarching, i.e., transcendental orientation. But the positions may have become too starkly delineated in order for the debate to reach any breakthrough: a seemingly unbridgeable gap yawns between the stances of ‘technology with (...) a small “t”’ and ‘Technology with a capital “T.”' Is there any way to reorient the debate? In this paper I propose to do so by considering whether there would be some way of arriving from one end of the spectrum to the other—crossing the gap. Exploring the purported wasteland in between “technology” and “Technology” by way of object-oriented ontology (OOO)—Harman, Morton—we can find it actually filled with countless gaps, adhering to every thing. Following the radical insights of OOO, we’d have to attest to a ‘thing-transcendentality.’ The ‘gap,’ then, that seemed so threatening and all-encompassing, becomes smeared out, levelled down to a multiplicity of perspectives. And this casts the debate, with its purported strict tension between ‘empirical’ and ‘transcendental’ positions, in fresh terms, opening up new ways for studying how the two interrelate. (shrink)

There has been a time in my teaching career that I used to cite in my introductory classes ‘Moral Philosophy’ from Erica Jong's Fear of Flying . The situation leading up to the quote is that the main character, Isadora, is asked a sexual favour by her brother in law, Pierre. Her answer and the subsequent dialogue read then as follows: ‘I can't’ , I said. ‘Come on,’ Pierre said, ‘I'll teach you.’ ‘I didn't mean that … I meant that (...) I can't; morally , I can…’. (shrink)

The topic of recognition has come to occupy a central place in debates in social and political theory. Developed by George Herbert Mead and Charles Taylor, it has been given expression in the program for Critical Theory developed by Axel Honneth in his book The Struggle for Recognition. Honneth's research program offers an empirically insightful way of reflecting on emancipatory struggles for greater justice and a powerful theoretical tool for generating a conception of justice and the good that enables the (...) normative evaluation of such struggles. This 2007 volume offers a critical clarification and evaluation of this research program, particularly its relationship to the other major development in critical social and political theory; namely, the focus on power as formative of practical identities proposed by Michel Foucault and developed by theorists such as Judith Butler, James Tully, and Iris Marion Young. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr argued that the emergence of biology as a special science in the early nineteenth century was possible due to the demise of the mathematical model of science and its insistence on demonstrative knowledge. More recently, John Zammito has claimed that the rise of biology as a special science was due to a distinctive experimental, anti-metaphysical, anti-mathematical, and anti-rationalist strand of thought coming from outside of Germany. In this paper we argue that this narrative neglects the important role played (...) by the mathematical and axiomatic model of science in the emergence of biology as a special science. We show that several major actors involved in the emergence of biology as a science in Germany were working with an axiomatic conception of science that goes back at least to Aristotle and was popular in mid-eighteenth-century German academic circles due to its endorsement by Christian Wolff. More specifically, we show that at least two major contributors to the emergence of biology in Germany—Caspar Friedrich Wolff and Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus—sought to provide a conception of the new science of life that satisfies the criteria of a traditional axiomatic ideal of science. Both C.F. Wolff and Treviranus took over strong commitments to the axiomatic model of science from major philosophers of their time, Christian Wolff and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, respectively. The ideal of biology as an axiomatic science with specific biological fundamental concepts and principles thus played a role in the emergence of biology as a special science. (shrink)

Situated normativity is the ability of skilled individuals to distinguish better from worse, adequate from inadequate, appropriate from inappropriate, or correct from incorrect in the context of a particular situation. Situated normativity consists in a situated appreciation expressed in normative behaviour, and can be experienced as a bodily affective tension that motivates a skilled individual to act on particular possibilities for action offered by a concrete situation. The concept of situated normativity has so far primarily been discussed in the context (...) of skilled unreflective action. In this paper, we aim to explore and sketch the role of the concept of situated normativity in characterising more reflective forms of normativity. The goal of the paper is two-fold: first, by showing more reflective forms of normativity to be continuous with unreflective situated normativity, we bring these reflective forms into the reach of embodied accounts of cognition; and second, by extending the concept of situated normativity, new light is thrown on questions regarding reflective forms of cognition. We show that sociomaterial aspects of situations are crucial for understanding more reflective forms of normativity. We also shed light on the important question of how explicit rules can compel people to behave in particular ways. (shrink)

InPart I of my article I have tried to show how the problem of negation has led the Jains to accept Non-existence and Existence as constituents ordharmas of every real object and to formulate their first dialectical principle:sad-asad-rŪpa $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{m} $$ vastu or ‘Every real object possesses a mode as an existent and as a non-existent’. Their interpretation of negation seems to be based on the ‘primitive’ realistic standpoint that every word in a true proposition, including the word ‘not(-)’, must have (...) some sort of objective reference. InPart II I have tried to show, using Mereology as a logical tool, howHaribhadra SŪri in the first chapter of theAnekānta-jaya-patākā defends the Jain viewpoint. (shrink)

This is the first book that pays systematic attention to ontological issues impinging on this question.

Many of our interactions in the twenty-first century - both good and bad - take place by means of institutions, technology, and artefacts. We inhabit a world of implements, instruments, devices, systems, gadgets, and infrastructures. Technology is not only something that we make, but is also something that in many ways makes us. The discipline of ethics must take this constitutive feature of institutions and technology into account; thus, ethics must in turn be embedded in our institutions and technology. The (...) contributors to this book argue that the methodology of 'designing in ethics' - addressing and resolving the issues raised by technology through the use of appropriate technological design - is the way to achieve this integration. They apply their original methodology to a wide range of institutions and technologies, using case studies from the fields of healthcare, media and security. Their volume will be important for philosophical practitioners and theorists alike. (shrink)

This article constitutes the introduction to a collection of essays in volume 4 of JAE, representing an extremely diverse collection of pieces written by authors from equally diverse backgrounds with the purpose of sharing the theoretical and practical issues related to research-ethics, or on ethics more generally. All of the articles are fresh contributions to the research-ethics review debate. The 17 authors of the 12 articles come from the United States, South Africa, and Canada. Their disciplinary or research backgrounds include (...) Aboriginal literatures, English literature, English-as-a Second-Language pedagogy, French literature, history, language and literacy, liberal arts, and linguistics – all fields in the cluster of the humanities. The volume also has contributions from social work, sociology, and speech pathology. The world of research-ethics review has become so pervasive that it invades all areas of research: it does not respect disciplinary boundaries. The articles in this special volume represent, in short, a microscope of the research world. (shrink)

In 'Signs of the Invisible', art philosopher Antoon Van den Braembussche penetrates deeper into the mystical dimension of art. In essays on Rumi, Paul Klee, Anish Kapoor and Paul Celan, he offers multifaceted reflections on the ineffable in art. More than ever, he breaks through the established boundaries between art and mysticism, tradition and innovation, religion and atheism, between Western and Eastern philosophy. In an age where the secular has taken over, art appears more than ever to respond to the (...) inner need for a deeper, existential and spiritual exploration. That makes 'Signs of the Invisible' an extremely topical book. It also embodies a new paradigm in art philosophy, in which the systematic connection between art and mysticism is central. (shrink)

Philosophical thinking is interrupted by the finitude of what cannot be named, on the one hand, and that within which it is subsumed as one of multiple modes of sense-making, on the other. Sense and Singularity elaborates Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophical project as an inquiry into the limits or finitude of philosophy itself, where it is interrupted, and as a practice of critical intervention where philosophy serves to interrupt otherwise unquestioned ways of thinking. Nancy’s interruption of philosophy, Van Den Abbeele argues, (...) reveals the limits of what philosophy is and what it can do, its apocalyptic end and its endless renewal, its Sisyphean interruption between the bounds of infinitely replicating sense and the conceptual vanishing point that is singularity. In examinations of Nancy’s foundational rereading of Descartes's cogito as iterative, his formal experimentations with the genres of philosophical writing, the account of “retreat” in understanding the political, and the interruptive play of sense and singularity in writings on the body, sexuality, and aesthetics, Van Den Abbeele offers a fresh account of one of our major thinkers as well as a provocative inquiry into what philosophy can do. (shrink)

In computer ethics, as in other branches of applied ethics, the problem of the justification of moral judgment is still unresolved. I argue that the method which is referred to as “The Method of Wide Reflective Equilibrium” (WRE) offers the best solution to it. It does not fall victim to the false dilemma of having to choose either case‐based particularist or principle‐based universalist approaches to the problem of moral justification. I claim that WRE also provides the best model of practical (...) moral reasoning available for computer ethics. It does not pretend to provide quasi‐algorithmic procedures for moral decision‐making, but neither does it abandon the regulative ideal of communicative transparency in discursive public justification. (shrink)

Neither the apparently cold-blooded murder of a complete stranger, the central event in The Stranger, nor Hugo's murder of Hoederer in Dirty Hands—a political assassination or crime of passion, depending on how one views it—can be considered unusual acts, in literature or in life. The topic of murder has itself created an extremely popular genre: the detective novel or "whodunit," which has become a huge industry and has aficionados everywhere, Sartre being one. In French theater, the topic of political assassination (...) has resulted in such famous plays as de Musset's Lorenzaccio (1834), which ostensibly deals with Florence in the sixteenth century and the tyrannical Alexandre de Médicis, who is assassinated by his young cousin, but is in fact "a limpid transposition of the failed revolution of July 1830." It is well known that Sartre was an admirer of Musset and Romantic theater. In 1946, Jean Cocteau, who helped with the staging of Les Mains sales (Dirty Hands), wrote L'Aigle ` deux têtes (The Two-Headed Eagle), which was inspired "by the sad life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and her tragic death by the hand of the Franco-Italian assassin, Luigi Lucheni." Sartre himself, in Nausea, has Anny use the engraving in Michelet's Histoire de France depicting the assassination of the Duke de Guise as a perfect illustration of "privileged situations.". (shrink)

We prove linear and polynomial growth properties of sets and functions that are existentially definable in the ordered group of integers with divisibility. We determine the laws of addition with order and divisibility.

This paper proposes an account of linguistic knowledge in terms of knowing-how, starting from Love's seminal distinction between first-order linguistic activity and second-order (or metalinguistic) practices. Metalinguistic practices are argued to be constitutive of linguistic knowledge. Skilful linguistic behaviour is subject to correction based on criterial support provided through metalinguistic practices. Linguistic know-how is knowing-how to provide and to recognise criterial support for first-order linguistic activity. I conclude that participation in first-order linguistic activity requires a critical reflective attitude, which implies (...) that all first-order linguistic activity has a second-order dimension. -/- . (shrink)