El Foro Global de Bioética en Investigación (GFBR por sus siglas en inglés) se reunió el 3 y 4 de noviembre en Buenos Aires, Argentina, con el objetivo de discutir la ética de la investigación con mujeres embarazadas. El GFBR es una plataforma mundial que congrega a actores clave con el objetivo de promover la investigación realizada de manera ética, fortalecer la ética de la investigación en salud, particularmente en países de ingresos bajos y medios, y promover colaboración entre países (...) del norte y del sur.a Los participantes en el GFBR provenientes de Latinoamérica incluyeron a eticistas, investigadores, miembros de comités de ética y representantes de autoridades sanitarias provenientes de Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panamá, Perú, Nicaragua y la República Dominicana. Una legítima preocupación por la protección de las mujeres embarazadas y sus embriones o fetos ha llevado a la mayoría de los países de la Región de las Américas a limitar la realización de estudios con mujeres embarazadas exclusivamente a aquellos estudios específicos sobre el embarazo, y a requerir la exclusión sistemática de las mujeres embarazadas o de las mujeres que quedan embarazadas en el curso del estudio. Ciertamente, a lo largo de la historia de la ética de la investigación, se ha creído erróneamente que proteger a una población es sinónimo de excluirla de los estudios. Se sabe ahora que proceder así implica exponer a riesgos mucho mayores a la población que se busca proteger. El embarazo implica cambios fisiológicos sustantivos e impacta profundamente la manera como el cuerpo metaboliza los medicamentos. Sin embargo, por evitar hacer investigación con mujeres embarazadas, no se ha producido la evidencia científica necesaria para tomar decisiones sobre tratamientos e intervenciones preventivas con dosis eficaces y seguras para ellas y sus embriones o fetos. A manera de ilustración, en el 2001 había en los Estados Unidos apenas más de una docena de medicamentos aprobados para uso en el embarazo (1) y en el 2011 la Food and Drug Administration (FDA) aprobó por primera vez en 15 años un medicamento para su uso en el embarazo (2). Como consecuencia de no haber producido la evidencia necesaria, se pone en riesgo la salud de las mujeres embarazadas cada vez que se les da atención médica. Las mujeres embarazadas se enferman y las mujeres enfermas se embarazan, y no se sabe si los medicamentos que se les da son eficaces o siquiera seguros para ellas y sus embriones o fetos. (shrink)

Social and environmental ratings provided by social rating agencies are multidimensional. The first goal of our paper is to identify a small number of independent and relevant socially responsible (SR) dimensions reflecting a firms’ coherent posture toward social issues. We put forward that these dimensions are not exactly the same as the ESG ones (Environment, Social, and Governance). Using the six sub-ratings provided by the Vigeo rating agency, we perform a principal component analysis and we highlight three main independent SR (...) dimensions related to (1) business stakeholders (employees, customers, and suppliers), (2) societal stakeholders (environment and society), and (3) financial stakeholders (stockholders and debt holders). The second objective of our paper is to explore the link between stock returns and these three SR dimensions. Our most notable finding is that for each SR dimension, investors ask for an additional risk premium when they accept to hold non-socially responsible stocks. The cost of equity is thus lower for SR firms. The average premium over the period 2003–2010 is larger for the components “business stakeholders” and “financial stakeholders” than for the component “societal stakeholders.” The premium for this last component has only existed since the end of 2008. Since that time, environment and community involvement have become important risk factors strongly considered by investors. For the three dimensions, investors notably penalize large non-social firms and reward small social firms. (shrink)

Margaret Archer plays a leading role in the sociological analysis of the relation between structure and agency, and particularly in the study of reflexivity. The main aim of this article is to discuss her approach, focusing on the main contributions and limitations of Archer’s theory of reflexivity. It is argued that even though her research is a pioneering one, proposing an operationalization of the concept of reflexivity in view of its empirical implementation, it also minimizes crucial social factors and the (...) dimensions necessary for a more complex and multi-dimensional study of the concept, such as social origins, family socialization, processes of internalization of exteriority, the role of other structure–agency mediation mechanisms and the persistence of social reproduction. (shrink)

Drawing from Goffman’s original observations on stigma and the consequences of interactions between the stigmatized and supportive or stigmatizing audiences, we conduct a 20-year review of the diverse literature on stigma to revisit the collective nature of stigmatization processes. We find that studies on stigma’s origins, responses, processes, and outcomes have diverged from Goffman’s relational view of stigma as they have overlooked important relational mechanisms explaining the processes of (de)stigmatization. We draw from those conclusions to justify the need to study (...) stigma as a collective phenomenon. We develop a relational perspective on stigma based on understanding how attributes are stigmatized (or not) by audiences in their interactions. We argue that to advance stigma research, it is necessary to build on Goffman’s theory to include the stigmatizers (i.e., the normal) and supporters (i.e., the wise); how they create, sustain, or remove stigma; and how they relate to the stigmatized (i.e., the targets). Accordingly, we provide a research agenda on stigma as a collective phenomenon that theorizes a relational perspective, proposes a typology of how audiences relate to stigmatization, and identifies patterns of relations between audiences. We thus offer a missing piece to existing accounts of stigma by focusing on the key role of audiences (i.e., stigmatizers or supporters of the stigmatized) rather than on the targets of stigma (i.e., the own). (shrink)

Studies of creative industries typically contend that creative work is profoundly precarious, taking place on a freelance basis in highly competitive, individualized and contingent labour markets. Such studies depict creative workers as correspondingly self-enterprising, self-reliant, self-interested and calculative agents who valorise care-free independence. In contrast, we adopt the ‘ethics of care’ approach to explore, recognize and appreciate the communitarian, relational and moral considerations as well as interpersonal connectedness and interdependencies that underpin creative work. Drawing on in-depth interviews with creative workers (...) in a range of marginal socio-cultural contexts, we argue that creative workers cultivate and sustain a diverse array of practices of care arising from an affective concern with the well-being of others. Far from being merely individualistic and crudely competitive actors, creative workers enact practical ethical responsibilities and affectivities towards a range of human and non-human others, including families, local communities and neighbourhoods, colleagues, artistic scenes and their adjacent genres, and surrounding national and linguistic cultures. In emphasizing the fundamental and structuring role of care in contingent labour markets our approach accords with recent trends in the social sciences that ‘affirmatively’—as opposed to ‘negatively’ and ‘suspiciously’—recognize that mutuality, solidarity and affectivity are powerful drivers of action on a par with or even exceeding market-driven self-centredness. (shrink)

The language of ethics expertise has become particularly important in bioethics in light of efforts to establish the value of the clinical ethics consultation, to specify who is qualified to function as a clinical ethics consultant, and to characterize how one should evaluate whether or not a person is so qualified. Supporters and skeptics about the possibility of ethics expertise use the language of ethics expertise in ways that reflect competing views about what ethics expertise entails. We argue for clarity (...) in understanding the nature of expertise and ethics expertise. To be an ethics expert, we argue, is to be an expert in knowing what ought to be done. Any attempt to articulate expertise with respect to knowing what ought to be done must include an account of ethics that specifies the nature of moral truth and the means by which we access this truth or a theoretical account of ethics such that expertise in another domain is linked to knowing or being better at judging what ought to be done and the standards by which this “knowing” or “being better at judging” is determined. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our analysis for the literature on ethics expertise in CEC. We do think that there are clear domains in which a clinical ethics consultant might be expert but we are skeptical about the possibility that this includes ethics expertise. Clinical ethics consultants should not be referred to as ethics experts. (shrink)

Socio-cultural shifts during the 1960s and 1970s included widespread secularization, challenges to authority and tradition, and an emphasis on individual choice. Healthcare and biomedical research advances accompanied these social changes, giving rise to numerous ethical and policy questions. The contemporary bioethics project emerged in this context with (at least) three aims: (1) to offer practical answers to these questions (often) in ways that (2) facilitate or support particular practices or goals (e.g., organ donation or human research) and that (3) appear (...) broadly applicable and legitimately enforceable. Philosophical thinking, which involves investigating and disambiguating concepts and categories, articulating conceptually clear definitions, and mapping arguments to identify premises, detect fallacies, and describe their logical implications, can undermine the practical goals of the bioethics project. This tension between the goals of bioethics and philosophical thinking might help to explain what some scholars see as a disinterest in philosophical thinking in bioethics today. (shrink)

Considering recent theoretical discussions about the concept of moral legitimacy, this study advances our understanding of its performance consequences. Specifically, it uncovers the mediating role of moral legitimacy in the relationship between regulations and industry performance. Our analysis of the U.S. state-level data on regulations in a controversial industry between 1994 and 2010 yields four significant findings. The results show that regulations not only decrease performance but also negatively impact moral legitimacy. Moreover, this study provides empirical evidence that moral legitimacy (...) is positively related to industry performance, providing much-needed direct support for this premise. Importantly, the results indicate that moral legitimacy mediates the effect of regulations on performance, but only when regulations are aligned with moral values. Overall, this study extends our understanding of how regulations influence moral legitimacy, and in turn impact industry performance. (shrink)

In this study we examined whether parents’ perceptions of students’ anxiety as well as perceived support from both teachers and classmates were predictive of changes in students’ academic motivation during the first wave of COVID-19. To this end, we used a retrospective pretest-posttest design together with a latent change score model to analyze our data. From April to May of 2020, 394 Portuguese parents of students in grades 1–9 participated in this study. Our results showed that students’ anxiety and teachers’ (...) social support, as perceived by parents, were highly significant predictors of academic motivation changes. Specifically, we found a negative effect of anxiety and a positive effect of teachers’ social support on students’ academic motivation. Our results did not show, however, a significant predictive role of classmates’ social support. This study provides an important contribution to further understand the intrapersonal and interpersonal factors that are associated with the decline of students’ academic motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pivotal role of teachers in sustaining students’ academic motivation and other relevant educational implications for the ongoing pandemic are discussed. (shrink)

This article refers to selected issues elaborated from my interdisciplinary doctoral thesis accomplished at the University of South Africa in 2019. I investigated the ethical-theoretical frameworks as well as practices of Christian humanitarian non-governmental organisations in Germany by combining a theoretical part and an empirical part. The empirical part was accomplished by interviewing 11 NGOs from the humanitarian field. The findings of theory and practice showed that many Christian NGOs typically conform to the secular mindset and regulations in order to (...) be able to function as organisations. The results also revealed that Christian NGOs have difficulties in defining their identity in order to be attractive and convincing to their current and prospective employees and donors. In addition, organisational and hierarchical structures are mostly taken from business companies but do not necessarily always fit to the individual organisations. The research is significant because it shows to what extent these NGOs experience tensions and insecurities having to work in a secular environment, and it helps to identify some typical challenges that Christian organisations face in Western countries. The purpose of the thesis was to impact on the reflection and practice of leaders of NGOs in their quest to understand developments and paradigm shifts, and ensure that they will act in a recognisably Christian way.Contribution: This article has been held as a presentation at the Leadership Conference in Pretoria, South Africa, in 2019. It contributes to the research of specific Christian leadership, and particularly of leadership in Christian non-governmental organisations. This article aims to describe the challenges these organisations face, having to work in the midst of a secular environment. (shrink)

Humanism is charged with fostering a harmful anthropocentrism that has led to the exploitation of non-human beings and the environment. Posthumanist and transhumanist ideas prominently aim at rethinking our self-understanding and human-nature relations. Yet these approaches turn out to be flawed when it comes to addressing the challenges of the “age of the humanity”, the Anthropocene. Whereas posthumanism fails in acknowledging the exceptional role of human beings with regard to political agency and responsibility, transhumanism overemphasizes human capabilities of controlling nature (...) and only deepens the human-nature dualism. Therefore, a critical and humble version of humanism is suggested as a viable alternative. Drawing on pragmatist thinkers William James and F.C.S. Schiller, a resource for de-centering the human being is provided that critically reflects our role in the larger ecosystem and underlines human potentials as well as human responsibilities. (shrink)

Plans to attempt what has been called a head transplant, a body transplant, and a head-to-body transplant in human beings raise numerous ethical, social, and legal questions, including the circumstances, if any, under which it would be ethically permissible to attempt whole-body transplantation (WBT) in human beings, the possible effect of WBT on family relationships, and how families should shape WBT decisions. Our assessment of many of these questions depends partially on how we respond to sometimes centuries-old philosophical thought experiments (...) about personal identity. As with so much in bioethics, it is impossible to escape, or at least inadvisable to try to bypass, the relevant foundational philosophical concerns. (shrink)

We adopt the largest consistent set defined by Chwe (1994; J. Econ. Theory 63: 299–325) to predict which coalition structures are possibly stable when players are farsighted. We also introduce a refinement, the largest cautious consistent set, based on the assumption that players are cautious. For games with positive spillovers, many coalition structures may belong to the largest consistent set. The grand coalition, which is the efficient coalition structure, always belongs to the largest consistent set and is the unique one (...) to belong to the largest cautious consistent set. (shrink)

In this essay I present some of my thoughts on the issue of boundaries in the professional relationship between service users and social workers. As a graduate student of social work, I had an opportunity to discuss ethical dilemmas in an international perspective in one of my courses. A guest professor, who provided international perspectives, was Prof. Kim Strom from UNC at Chapel Hill in North Carolina, USA. The lectures offered a fresh perspective that raised many questions about thick and (...) thin boundaries in social work – especially when approaching social work by following prevailing guidelines for social work in Slovenia requiring us to co-create solutions through dialogue with service users, keeping in mind that service users are actually the ones who are the experts from experience. In this way, the working relationship seeks to foster a sense of partnership between social workers and service users. In this essay I would like to challenge the idea of rigid boundaries in social work and explore the possibility of fluid boundaries, keeping in mind that boundaries should reflect their main purpose, which I believe is to protect human dignity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Persons generally must give their informed consent to participate in research. To provide informed consent persons must be given information regarding the study in simple, lay language. Consent must be voluntary, and persons giving consent must be legally competent to consent and possess the capacity to understand and appreciate the information provided. This paper examines the relationship between the obligation to disclose information regarding risks and the requirement that persons have the capacity to understand and appreciate the information. There (...) has been insufficient attention to the extent to which persons must be able to understand and appreciate study information in order to have their consent deemed valid when the information is provided in simple, lay language. This paper argues that (1) the capacity to understand and appreciate information that should be deemed necessary to give valid consent should be defined by the capacity of the typical, cognitively normal adult and (2) the capacity of the typical, cognitively normal adult to understand and appreciate the concept of risk is limited. Therefore, (3) all things being equal, potential subjects must possess a limited capacity to understand and appreciate risk to be deemed competent to consent to research participation. (4) In some cases investigators ought to require that persons possess a greater than typical capacity to understand and appreciate risk. (shrink)

Contemporary genome editing techniques have made genomic intervention—from microorganism to human—more accessible, easier to use, and more accurate than previous methods. We argue that, notwithstanding its merits in treating and preventing disease in humans, genome editing represents a potential threat for domestic and international security, requiring an integrated approach in regulating, detecting, preventing, and mitigating the risk of its use for malicious purposes. Despite the global regulatory ambitions of the 2021 WHO framework, we see insufficient attention given to the future (...) prospect of dual-use genomic technology. Drawing parallels with the nuclear field, we suggest tentative practical steps for a way forward in dealing with genome editing technologies, such as: 1) adapting national (bio)security and defence strategies to include genome editing as a possible threat (with conceivable WMD potential); 2) enhancing the international dialogue on genome editing and raising the issue at the highest level; 3) working towards a global, legally binding verification mechanism; 4) tracking genome editing technologies. (shrink)

Studies of non-standard, project-based forms of work prevalent in the creative industries have typically theorized the relational dynamics of work as a competitive process of social capital accumulation involving an individualistic, self-enterprising, zero-sum, and winner-takes-all struggle for favourable social network-positioning. Problematizing this prevailing conceptualization, our empirical case study draws on fifty in-depth interviews and two focus groups with creative workers in Ghana to show how relations of mutual aid, including elaborate efforts to live harmoniously with others, are intricately intertwined with (...) economic practices of getting by and getting ahead. Our analysis abductively mobilizes insights from Afro-communitarian ethics to theorize the mutual aid we observed as a complex socio-economic practice of relational resource redistribution contingent on degrees of social proximity. In applying “a theory from the South” to foreground the role of moral obligations, social harmony, and hands-on practices of mutual aid in non-standard forms of work, we contribute a “decolonial critique” of relationality of relevance to scholars of creative work and business ethicists. (shrink)

Recent research has found that the omission of accent marks in Spanish does not produce slower word identification times in go/no-go lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks [e.g., cárcel = carcel], thus suggesting that vowels like á and a are represented by the same orthographic units during word recognition and reading. However, there is a discrepant finding with the yes/no lexical decision task, where the words with the omitted accent mark produced longer response times than the words with the accent (...) mark. In Experiment 1, we examined this discrepant finding by running a yes/no lexical decision experiment comparing the effects for words and non-words. Results showed slower response times for the words with omitted accent mark than for those with the accent mark present, thus suggesting a bias toward a “word” response for accented items in the yes/no lexical decision task. To test this interpretation, Experiment 2 used the same stimuli with a blocked design and a go/no-go lexical decision task. Results showed similar response times to words regardless of whether the accent mark was omitted. This pattern strongly suggests that the longer response times to words with an omitted accent mark in yes/no lexical decision experiments are a task-dependent effect rather than a genuine reading cost. (shrink)

U radu se raspravlja o pojmu i povijesti utopije, pri čemu se naglasak stavlja na moderne oblike utopija rodne tematike. Iako bi se moglo reći da je utopijsko mišljenje imanentno čovjeku, danas se riječ ‘utopija’ koristi mahom u pejorativnom značenju tlapnje i/ili političke zamisli čije ostvarenje nužno vodi u neki oblik totalitarizma. Takva su određenja utopije iznikla iz etimoloških, povijesnih i idejnih nedoumica vezanih uz utopijske teorijske i praktične tvorevine. Opisujući utopiju pojmovima kritike, nade i mašte te ju vezujući uz (...) pojam Mannheimove aktivne utopije, u njoj je moguće pronaći elemente za suočavanje s modernim rodnim i ekološkim problemima. Kao primjer su dane feminističke utopije u kojima su testirane razne rodne teorije i prakse te su predložena rješenja za stvaranje ne idealnih i dovršenih, već poboljšanih svjetova, odnosno svjetova koji dopuštaju poboljšanje.This article discusses the concept and history of utopia with an emphasis on the modern forms of gender utopias. Although it can be said that utopian thought is inherent to humans, today the word ‘utopia’ is generally used in a pejorative meaning of an illusion and/or political concept whose actualization necessarily leads to some form of totalitarianism. These assumptions originated from etymological, historical and conceptional dilemmas associated with utopian theoretical and practical realizations. Describing utopia in terms of critique, hope and imagination as well as linking it with the concept of Mannheim’s active utopia it is possible to find in it elements that can be used for dealing with modern gender and ecological problems. As an example are given feminist utopias in which were tested different gender theories and practices and were suggested solutions for creating not ideal or completed but improved worlds, that is, worlds that allow improvement. (shrink)

Extractive foraging tasks, such as digging, are broadly practiced among hunter-gatherer populations in different ecological conditions. Despite tuber-gathering tasks being widely practiced by children and adolescents, little research has focused on the physical traits associated with digging ability. Here, we assess how age and energetic expenditure affect the performance of this extractive task. Using an experimental approach, the energetic cost of digging to extract simulated tubers is evaluated in a sample of 40 urban children and adolescents of both sexes to (...) measure the intensity of the physical effort and the influence of several anatomical variables. Digging is a moderately vigorous activity for inexperienced girls and boys from 8 to 14 years old, and it requires significant physical effort depending on strength and body size. However, extracting subterranean resources is a task that may be performed effectively without previous training. Sex-specific and age-specific differences in the net energy expenditure of digging were detected, even though both sexes exhibited similar proficiency levels when performing the task. Our results highlight that both boys and girls spend considerable energy while digging, with differences largely driven by body size and age. Other factors beyond ability and experience, such as strength and body size, may influence the proficiency of juveniles in performing certain physically intensive foraging tasks, such as gathering tubers. (shrink)

Roman Catholic healthcare institutions in the United States face a number of threats to the integrity of their missions, including the increasing religious and moral pluralism of society and the financial crisis many organizations face. These organizations in the United States often have fought fervently to avoid being obligated to provide interventions they deem intrinsically immoral, such as abortion. Such institutions no doubt have made numerous accommodations and changes in how they operate in response to the growing pluralism of our (...) society, but they have resisted crossing certain lines and providing particular interventions deemed objectively wrong. Catholic hospitals in Belgium have responded differently to pluralism. In response to a growing diversity of moral views and to the Belgian Act of Euthanasia of 2002, Catholic hospitals in Belgium now engage in euthanasia. This essay examines a defense that has been offered of this practice of euthanasia in Catholic hospitals and argues that it is misguided. (shrink)

This review essay explores recent historical and anthropological literature on the emergence and development of transcultural psychiatry in the second half of the twentieth century. It examines how postcolonial psychiatry attempted to remove itself from its erstwhile colonial frameworks and strove to introduce new concepts and paradigms to make itself relevant in the context of decolonization and postwar reconstruction. The essay looks at both continuities and discontinuities between colonial and post-colonial transcultural psychiatry, asking how the recent surge of scholarly literature (...) in this field engaged with these issues. It also aims to identify the most important avenues for future research. (shrink)

I analyze how machi discourse and practice of gender and identity contribute to feminist debates about gendered indigenous Others, and the effects that Western notions of Self and Other and feminist rhetoric have on Mapuche women and machi: people who heal with herbal remedies and the help of spirits. Machi juggling of different worlds offers a particular understanding of the way identity and gender are constituted and of the relationship between Self and Other, theory and practice, subject and object, feminism (...) and Womanism. (shrink)

Pretendemos analisar a crítica ao direito marxiana exposta nos comentários à obra Lectures on the early history of institutions, do jurista inglês Henry Sumner Maine, presentes nos "assim chamados" Cadernos Etnológicos. Para tal, passaremos pela crítica de Karl Marx à teoria do direito de Maine, passando também por considerações sobre os juristas analíticos John Austin e Jeremy Bentham, nos quais o autor das Lectures se baseia fortemente. Em seguida, trataremos das críticas à concepção de Maine sobre a origem do Estado (...) e do direito. Então, explicaremos como Marx se contrapõe a Maine voltando-se para o solo da história real, e assim analisa a gênese e o desenvolvimento direito na Irlanda e sua associação com a religião cristã, tanto antes quanto durante a colonização inglesa, observando também a violência por trás da imposição das leis coloniais. (shrink)

Background Despite nurses receiving education on how to respond during crises, the stress and demands arising from unprecedented situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may affect their work engagement. Aim To appraise and synthesize studies examining work engagement among nurses in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods It is a systematic review in which three databases were searched. Critical appraisal tools and PRISMA guidelines were used. Content analysis was performed. Ethical considerations Ethical approval was not required for this systematic (...) review. Findings A total of 21 studies were included. The results were classified into three categories: (1) levels and meanings of work engagement, (2) the relationship of work engagement with various factors, and (3) measures to enhance work engagement. Conclusion The review revealed that nurses’ work engagement varied from moderate to high. Factors such as education level and work schedule flexibility influenced their engagement. Positive associations were found between work engagement and job satisfaction, intention to stay, and organizational support, while stress and workload showed negative relationships. The crucial role of health policymakers, hospital administrators, and nurse managers in acting ethically, creating favorable working conditions and fostering nurses’ work engagement was emphasized. (shrink)

Aristotelian virtue is the source of the soul’s best actions and passions. It can compel us to do the best acts and doings, always in a better way. Aristotelian virtue helps us to act under the right reasoning, which is elected from an intellectual disposition called prudence, which is in charge of uniting knowledge and action. Aristotle says one can learn to be virtuous through exercising good habits, with formation, experience and time to do such an exercise. Besides, actions according (...) to virtue will be nice by themselves, if a virtuous man judges righteously. This is precisely the root of good living and good acting for Aristotle. The activities performed by a good man are, then and by themselves, good, nice and happy, and are also related to virtue and to the actions of a virtuous man. This paper aims at analyzing virtue as a pathway to happiness, the actions to achieve it and to describe some intellectual and moral virtues established within the moral philosophy of this thinker. (shrink)

Natural deduction systems for classical, intuitionistic and modal logics were deeply investigated by Prawitz [D. Prawitz, Natural Deduction: A Proof-theoretical Study, in: Stockholm Studies in Philosophy, vol. 3, Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm, 1965. Reprinted at: Dover Publications, Dover Books on Mathematics, 2006] from a proof-theoretical perspective. Prawitz proved weak normalization for classical logic only for a language without logical or, there exists and with a restricted application of reduction ad absurdum. Reduction steps related to logical or, there exists and classical (...) negation bring about many problems solved only rather recently. For classical S5 modal logic, Prawitz defined a normalizable system, but for a language without logical or, there exists, ◊ and, for a propositional language without ◊, Medeiros [M.da P.N. Medeiros, A new S4 classical modal logic in natural deduction, Journal of Symbolic Logic 71 799–809] presented a normalizable system for classical S4. We can mention many cut-free Gentzen systems for S4, S5 and K45/K45D, some normalizable natural deduction systems for intuitionistic modal logics and one more for full classical S4, but not for full classical S5. Here our focus is on the definition of a classical and normalizable natural deduction system for S5, taking not only □ and ◊ as primitive symbols, but also all connectives and quantifiers, including classical negation, disjunction and the existential quantifier. The normalization procedure is based on the strategy proposed by Massi [C.D.B. Massi, Provas de normalizaçaõ para a lógica clássica, Ph.D. Thesis, Departamento de Filosofia, UNICAMP, Campinas, 1990] and Pereira and Massi [L.C. Pereira, C.D.B. Massi, Normalização para a lógica clássica, in: O que nos faz pensar, Cadernos de Filosofia da PUC-RJ, vol. 2, 1990, pp. 49–53] for first-order classical logic to cope with the combined use of classical negation, disjunction and the existential quantifier. Here we extend such results to deal with □ and ◊ too. The elimination rule for ◊ uses the notions of connection and of essentially modal formulas already proposed by Prawitz for the introduction of □. Beyond weak normalization, we also prove the subformula property for full S5. (shrink)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is responsible for prosecuting individuals for heinous crimes that take place during civil and/or international armed conflicts, including sexual violence. Prosecuting this crime relies primarily on survivor accounts, but witnesses often fear the psychological effects of giving such testimony, particularly because there is a high risk of retraumatization, a stigma associated with victimhood, and a fear of victim-blaming. Thus, the Court’s Victims and Witness Unit (VWU) puts forth provisions for questioning vulnerable witnesses, requiring, in part, (...) that questioners avoid embarrassing or offending witnesses. Using a discourse analytic approach, this paper examines transcripts from three recent ICC cases dealing with wartime sexual violence—_Bemba, Ongwen_, and _Katanga and Chui—_exploring the discursive strategies employed by prosecutors and defense attorneys in these trials as they navigate arguing their cases before the judges while also tailoring their questions to adhere to the VWU’s provisions. I show that adhering to the provisions often involves relying on euphemistic expressions to discuss rape—which enter the trial discourse through linguistic formulations and reformulations—even though these expressions reflect the language used to discuss consensual sex and not sexual violence. Thus, this method of adhering to the provisions can undermine the prosecution’s case while helping the defense’s. (shrink)