In this essay I preface a discussion of “indifferent” globality, as seen in the agency of microbes and smart machines, and populism as an exemplar of tensions in local-global entanglements, with a brief excursus on the what exercises current scholarship on the global. The whole is written with Protosociology’s 30 year engagement with hard questions in social theory in mind.

The search for “usable” expert systems is leading somemedical researchers to question the appropriate role of these programs. Most current systems assume a limited role for the human user, delegating situated “decision-control” to the machine. As expert systems are only able to replace a narrow range of human intellectual functions, this leaves the programs unable to cope with the “constructivist” nature of human knowledge-use. In returning practical control to the human doctor, some researchers are abandoning focusedproblem-solving in favour of supportiveproblem-analysis. (...) Using ONCOCIN and QMR as examples, this article contrasts these approaches and suggests that the latter avoids many of the difficulties currently facing medical expert systems. (shrink)

Working through Esme Johnson’s case brings to light many of the elements that make for a rich and impactful clinical ethics consultation. The health and well-being of a young person, whether a fami...

This research illustrates dangers inherent in the gap created when organizations decouple ethics program adoption from implementation. Using a sample of 182 professionals in the pharmaceutical and financial services industries, we examine the relationship between structural decoupling of formal ethics programs and individual-level perceptions and behavior. Findings strongly support the hypothesized relationships between decoupling and organizational members’ legitimacy perceptions of the ethics program, psychological contract breach, organizational cynicism, and unethical behavior.

Organizational ethics programs often are created to address tensions in organizational values that have been identified through repeated clinical ethics consultation requests. Clinical ethicists possess some core competencies that are suitable for the leadership of high-quality organizational ethics programs, but they may need to develop new skills to build these programs, such as familiarity with healthcare delivery science, healthcare financing, and quality improvement methodology. To this end, we suggest that clinical ethicists build organizational ethics programs incrementally and via quality improvement (...) projects undertaken in collaboration with senior clinical leaders. Organizational ethics programs often differ from clinical ethics programs in their membership and processes, and likely will require ethicists to forge new partnerships with a wide array of organizational leaders. With attention to the ways that organizational ethics programs differ from clinical ethics programs, and investment in quality improvement methodology and formal institutional needs assessments, clinical ethics leaders can position an organizational ethics program to advocate effectively for visible and compelling alignment of leadership decision making with the values of the organization. (shrink)

This paper considers the problems that arise when death, which is a philosophically difficult concept, is incorporated into healthcare metrics, such as the quality-adjusted life year (QALY). These problems relate closely to the debate over euthanasia and assisted suicide because negative QALY scores can be taken to mean that patients would be ‘better off dead’. There is confusion in the literature about the meaning of 0 QALY, which is supposed to act as an ‘anchor’ for the surveyed preferences on which (...) QALYs are based. In the context of the debate over euthanasia, the QALY assumes an ability to make meaningful comparisons between life-states and death. Not only is this assumption questionable, but the ethical debate is much more broad than the question of whether death is preferable to a state of living. QALYs are derived from preferences about health states, so do not necessarily reflect preferences about events (eg, dying) or actions (eg, killing). This paper presents a new kind of problem for the QALY. As it stands, the QALY provides confused and unreliable information when it reports zero or negative values, and faces further problems when it appears to recommend death. This should preclude its use in the debate over euthanasia and assisted suicide. These problems only apply where the QALY involves or seems to involve a comparison between life-states and death, and are not relevant to the more general discussion of the use of QALYs as a tool for comparing the benefits derived from treatment options. (shrink)

John A Barrie; G. H. Bantock as Educational Philosopher, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 93–106, https://doi.org/10.1.

This article approaches the question of what musters, or should muster, as global theory for these times through the lens of mediatization. Emergent globalities – states of global (perhaps glocal) becoming – are seen as constituted by world-making practices that are obviously, per­haps paradigmatically, referenced in processes of digital communication within and across borders. This is no hymn to “mere connection”, but a sustained attempt to marry process and consciousness with a proper regard for the vagaries of human interaction with (...) the structures of indifferent technology and indifferent globalities. (shrink)

When I engage in some routine activity, it will usually be the case that I mean or intend the present move to be followed by others. What does meaning the later moves consist in? How do I know, when I come to perform them, that they were what I meant? Problems familiar from Wittgenstein's and Kripke's discussions of linguistic meaning arise here. Normally, I will not think of the later moves. But, even if I do, there are reasons to deny (...) that thinking of them can constitute what it is to mean to perform them. I argue that the problem can be solved, in the case of routine action, by the notion that our behavioural routines are guided by what I callmodest agent memory. It will help explain both how wecan have future moves in mind and how we can be in a position to avow the fact. (shrink)

I am concerned to understand that relation to a situation which we call fearing it. Some say this cannot be done: it is a brute fact about us that we fear certain things and we understand another's fear when we see that he confronts a situation of this sort (a basic fear object) or one which he understandably associates with this sort. In Section I, I argue that being associated with a basic fear object will not usefully explain a current (...) fear. In Section II, I argue that the obvious candidates for being basic fears will not do the required work. The notion should be rejected. I then argue that to fear an object is to take it as exhibiting one's lack of control and I proceed to describe the nature and content of this notion. (shrink)

Sexual depictions were analyzed in 139 episodes of seven drama serials on British mainstream television over a four-week period in November–December 2006. Scenes that depicted sexual behavior and talk about sexual matters were counted separately. Further distinctions were made on the basis of the levels of intimacy and the graphic nature of portrayals. A total of 506 sexual scenes were found that occurred at the rate of 6.5 per hour across the seven soaps, but this figure was inflated by one (...) late-night serial that averaged 16.0 scenes per hourly episode. Nearly two-thirds of these scenes were restricted to talk about sexual matters, while the others contained overt depictions of sexual behavior. Sexual intercourse was relatively rare and restricted in terms of overt depictions to the late-night serial. Passionate kissing was far more prevalent throughout these programs regardless of the time of day the program was transmitted. When sexual intercourse was featured, this was generally in the context of loss of virginity or of infidelity. (shrink)

The economic aspect of teachers's salaries.--Public school maintenance.

Summary The paper reports the results of a longitudinal case study conducted in Australia and New Zealand. The study compares the reading and comprehension age of children in their fifth and sixth years in school. Reading and comprehension ages of 121 children who had Reading Recovery intervention at age 6 were compared with those of a Comparison group of 121 children, drawn from the same classes who, at age 6 years, had been better performers in literacy. Reading and comprehension assessment (...) was conducted with the use of the Neale Analysis of Reading and analysed by means of a t?test. Results show that the mean reading age of ex?Reading Recovery children was nearly 12 months superior to that of the Comparison group and that the mean comprehension age was nearly 13 months superior at very highly significant levels. The results strongly suggest that Reading Recovery tuition at age 6 years enabled the 121 ex?Reading Recovery children to make greater progress in literacy than children in the Comparison group. (shrink)

Fringe science has been an important topic since the start of the revolution in the social studies of science that occurred in the early 1970s. The revolution was what Collins and Evans refer to as the "second wave of science studies," while this paper is best thought of as an exercise in "third wave science studies." The first wave was that period which reached its apogee in the aftermath of the Second World War when science was seen as unquestionably the (...) pre-eminent form of knowledge-making, and the role of philosophy and sociology was to understand how it was so and how societies could be arranged to nurture it best; the second wave was "social constructionism" which became folded into post-modernism in... (shrink)

The _Nicomachean Ethics_ is one of Aristotle’s most widely read and influential works. Ideas central to ethics—that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence—found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called “the Philosopher.” Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle’s thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the _Ethics_ that is as remarkably (...) faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering. Aristotle is well known for the precision with which he chooses his words, and in this elegant translation his work has found its ideal match. Bartlett and Collins provide copious notes and a glossary providing context and further explanation for students, as well as an introduction and a substantial interpretive essay that sketch central arguments of the work and the seminal place of Aristotle’s _Ethics_ in his political philosophy as a whole. The _Nicomachean Ethics_ has engaged the serious interest of readers across centuries and civilizations—of peoples ancient, medieval, and modern; pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish—and this new edition will take its place as the standard English-language translation. (shrink)

With so much attention being paid to the development and refinement of appropriate criteria and tests for death, little attention has been given to the broader conceptual issues having to do with its definition or with the relation of a definition to its criterion. The task of selecting the correct criterion is, however, virtually impossible without proper attention to the broader conceptual setting in which the definition operates as the key feature. All of the issues I will discuss arise because (...) of this lack of concern with conceptual matters. Such problems as incorrectly diagnosing a patient as dead prior to the harvesting of his or her organs, defending the idea that death is reversible, and advocating a brainstem criterion of death, are all, I believe, errors that derive from this misplaced emphasis. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Ethics of War. By Barrie Paskins and Michael Dockrill.

In this article I will address the critical question of the constitution of global systems and the part played in such processes by what is often summarized as culture. I examine the important distinction between culture and globalization and culture as constitutive of global social relations. The need to cleave to a systemic treatment of globality is put, while noting the dangers that lie in one-dimensional accounts of global system constitution. To offset any such tendency I explore the constitution of (...) global systemness from a structurationist perspective. I outline the nature and significance of culture in the study of global systems, drawing attention to different literatures. Finally I underscore the importance of the cultural turn in the study of global systems and what has to be done to take full advantage of it.In what follows I will address the critical question of the constitution of global systems and the part played in such processes by what is conveniently – if sometimes unhelpfully – summarized as “culture”. By global systems I mean networks of interaction and meaning that transcend both societal and national frames of reference. I want to shift the emphasis away from an under-theorized focus on cultural globalization to a consideration of global systems as enacted in part through cultural processes. In other words, I do not want to conflate the conjunctional features of contemporary (cultural) globalization with culture as the realm of lived experience integral to the enactment of all social-systemic relations. In some respects this approach may be seen as part of a shift – perhaps a paradigm shift – in how we understand the space of the social, and in how, or whether, we construe the global as the constitutive of all social relations (Beck 2003; Shaw 2003). I will begin with a mild polemic against a well-known systemic account of world-making forces that highlights some of these issues. (shrink)