ABSTRACT Genomic research and biobanking present several ethical, social and cultural challenges, particularly when conducted in settings with limited scientific research capacity. One of these challenges is determining the model of consent that should support the sharing of human biological samples and data in the context of international collaborative research. In this paper, we report on the views of key research stakeholders in Ghana on what should count as good ethical practice when seeking consent for genomic research and biobanking in (...) Africa. This study was part of a multi-country qualitative case study conducted in three African countries: Ghana, Uganda and Zambia under the auspices of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa initiative (H3Africa). Our study suggests that while participants are willing to give consent for their samples and associated data to be used for future research purposes, they expect to receive feedback about the progress of the research and about the kinds of research being undertaken on their samples and data. These expectations need to be anticipated and discussed during the consent process which should be seen as part of an ongoing communication process throughout the research process. (shrink)

Bonginkosi Shozi and Donrich Thaldar’s (2023) contribution is relevant to epistemic justice, which involves efforts to develop an inclusive and global bioethics that takes seriously perspectives fr...

I. The function of models in the empirical sciencesII. Structure and purpose: conditions of a structural nature which models should satisfy in order to accomplish their function.III. Generalisation and specialisation of the classical definition of model, in view of the above requirements:the algebraic model conceptthe semantic model conceptthe syntactical model conceptIV. Attempt towards reunification: the concept of model on a pragmatic basis.

This collection of Leo Abse's last essays are writings that he was working on from 2006 up to and during his final illness.

Negligence, the creation of an unjustifiable risk of harm, plays a pivotal role in both criminal and civil law. This article takes up two negligence-related problems unique to its role in the criminal law. The first has to do with its "harm" component, the second with its "unjustifiability" component. The first problem is why the criminal law distinguishes so sharply between negligent wrongdoing that results in harm and negligent wrongdoing that does not, when it does not distinguish equally sharply between (...) intentional wrongdoing that results in harm and intentional wrongdoing that does not. The answer has to do with a peculiar feature in the logic of intention and with the symmetric way we ascribe responsibility for blameworthy and praiseworthy actions. My second problem is why the criminal law judges the blameworthiness of negligent actions on the basis of the harm wrought rather than the gap between the harm wrought and the justification for risking it. The answer has to do with a more general feature of the criminal law, the refusal to recognize "partial defenses" and "partial offenses.". (shrink)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 20, Issue 3, Page 619-625, May 2012.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sanctioned investor-paid rating agency Egan-Jones for falsely stating that it did not know its clients’ investment positions. The SEC’s action against Egan-Jones raises the broad question whether knowledge of clients’ investment positions creates a conflict of interest for investor-paid ratings. In an experimental setting, we find that investor-paid rating agencies are likely to assign credit ratings that are biased in favor of their clients’ positions, and that this effect is attenuated when the rated company (...) has a sophisticated investor base that is expected to scrutinize ratings. The effect is not conditional on the risk profile of the rated companies. Taken together, our findings suggest that a conflict of interest stemming from investors’ preferences is likely to bias ratings under investor-pays business models, but scrutiny by the company’s investor base can counteract this bias. (shrink)

This essay offers a critique of Larry Temkin’s seminal new book, Rethinking the Good, at the heart of which is the highly counterintuitive claim that all things considered judgments are not transitive. I evaluate Temkin’s claims through the lens of social choice theory, pursue some of its larger implications and applications, and conclude with a very general worry having to do with the intimate connection between transitivity and logical consistency, namely whether, if Temkin is right, this would not bring all (...) moral reasoning to an abrupt halt. (shrink)

The eukaryotic genome is a mosaic of eubacterial and archaeal genes in addition to those unique to itself. The mosaic may have arisen as the result of two prokaryotes merging their genomes, or from genes acquired from an endosymbiont of eubacterial origin. A third possibility is that the eukaryotic genome arose from successive events of lateral gene transfer over long periods of time. This theory does not exclude the endosymbiont, but questions whether it is necessary to explain the peculiar set (...) of eukaryotic genes. We use phylogenetic studies and reconstructions of ancestral first appearances of genes on the prokaryotic phylogeny to assess evidence for the lateral gene transfer scenario. We find that phylogenies advanced to support fusion can also arise from a succession of lateral gene transfer events. Our reconstructions of ancestral first appearances of genes reveal that the various genes that make up the eukaryotic mosaic arose at different times and in diverse lineages on the prokaryotic tree, and were not available in a single lineage. Successive events of lateral gene transfer can explain the unusual mosaic structure of the eukaryotic genome, with its content linked to the immediate adaptive value of the genes its acquired. Progress in understanding eukaryotes may come from identifying ancestral features such as the eukaryotic splicesome that could explain why this lineage invaded, or created, the eukaryotic niche. BioEssays 28:57–64, 2006. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Contextualizing the emergence of history of philosophy within eighteenth-century German Enlightenment, this book discusses the philosophical nature of the historiographical concept ‘system of philosophy’ and the concept’s influence upon the methods of history of philosophy and history of ideas.

Metaphysics, formerly the queen of science, fell into oblivion under the onslaught of empiricism and positivism and its very possibllity came to be denied. Professor Elders traces the history of this process and shows how St. Thomas innovated in determining both the subject of metaphysics and the manner in which one enters this science, particularly in the framework of his Aristotle commentaries. The work then considers being and its properties, its divisions into being in act and being in potency, into (...) the act of being essence, and into substance and the accidents. Finally the causes of being are considered. The work also introduces and surveys the extensive literature of Thomas interpretation of the past 50 years. (shrink)

"Building upon the wide range of selections and the extensive historical coverage that marked previous editions, this new compilation stretches from the earliest attempts to define the cinema to the most recent efforts to place film in the contexts of psychology, sociology, and philosophy, and to explore issues of gender and race. Reorganized into eight sections - each comprising the major fields of critical controversy and analysis - this new edition features reformulated introductions and biographical headnotes that contextualize the readings, (...) making the text more accessible than ever to students, film enthusiasts, and general readers alike. The seventh edition also integrates exciting new material on feminist theory, queer cinema, and global cinema, as well as a new section, "Digitization and Globalization," which engages important recent developments in technology and world cinema.". (shrink)

Este artigo parte de uma proposta terapêutica psicanalítica de cura pela fala e das premissas dos estudos a respeito de um performativo para conjurar referenciais e tecer considerações acerca do feitiço, tomando-o na sua dimensão de acontecimento singular e de natureza imprevisível. Esta discussão ocorrerá debruçada sobre os meios de um capitalismo e pautada a partir das ambivalências de uma ideia de fetiche. No ensejo desta discussão, são retomadas algumas colocações que elaboram sobre os interstícios entre magia e política para (...) indicar a importância de uma dimensão incapturável no fazer científico. (shrink)

Applied ontology is the attempt to put to use the rigorous tools of philosophical ontology in the development of category systems which can be of use in the formalization and systematization of knowledge of a given domain. In what follows we shall sketch some elements of the ontology of legal and socio-political institutions, paying attention especially to the normativity involved in such institutions. We shall see that there is more than one type of normativity, but that this fact that has (...) often been ignored in standard attempts by philosophers to build ontologies of legal and other socio-political entities. In order to provide a sound system of categories for legal and socio-political institutions and entities, however, the manifold of normativity needs to be addressed. The classical examples of normative statements have been moral propositions; they do not merely describe states of affairs; they tell us how states of affairs ought to be. The distinction between how things are and how they ought to be is the basis of the distinction between fact and value. Analytic philosophers for a long time shunned discussions of normativity and ethics. They considered ethical statements as pseudo-propositions, or as expressions of pro- or con-attitudes of no theoretical significance.1 Nowadays, in contrast, prominent analytic philosophers discuss normative problems and there are important books written by such philosophers on topics such as law and justice. Here we pay attention to three seminal thinkers in this development: H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, and John R. Searle in concerning ourselves especially with the way in which they deal with the issue of normativity. Hart is, within the context of recent analytic philosophy, the most important philosopher of law, Rawls the most.. (shrink)

This article focuses on two aspects of contemporary political philosophy. The first one is political philosophy as a philosophy strategy. The second one is political philosophy as an activity that considers the politicity of philosophy and what is political. Our basic claim is the impossibility of separating these two meanings of political philosophy. Rather than maintaining the distinction between the empirical and the speculative in terms of political philosophy, the basic attitude is to look at what is happening within the (...) polis, whether the police remain without polites or whether the polis allow the political community to recognize it. The discovery of the politicity of philosophy is undoubtedly not something new, however, it has become a more evident focus of philosophy after World War II. Many different trends in contemporary philosophy have brought new ideas within this perspective: from Carl Schmitt to Leo Strauss, from Frankfurt School thinkers to many important figures of contemporary French philosophy, such as Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis; they all have developed critical, contemporary and radical philosophical thoughts. It can be easily claimed that this movement in political philosophy comes with a conjuncture in which the crisis has become more evident in the context of political praxis and concept. In the first phase, the fading of ideologies forced the return from 'theory' to philosophy. Secondly, the hopelessness and failures created by the actual communisms forced them to consider different praxis. Thirdly, structural crises and transformations in the world political order have also prepared the crisis of liberal political philosophies seeking answers to the existing crisis with their own concepts. It was no coincidence that after the pursuit of pure philosophy in the Belle Époque period, it was recollected as philosophy's politics. A singular, constituent praxis, and an orientation that desires emancipation, is the sole possibility of the idea of the universal. In this context, political philosophy is not only an abstraction practice on political things, but on the contrary, an activity on the establishment or disruption of the logic of political things. The togetherness of the necessity of understanding political things and research faithful to the idea of truth; reveals the vitality of plurality of political organizations against violence. (shrink)

Shows how Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) picked up ideas on metaphor and ingenuity from the literary rhetoric of the age and turned them into valuable concepts in a general theory of knowledge and the philosophy of history for which he is now mainly known. Also shows how his original position enabled him to criticize Descartes' idea of rationality. Appends translations of relevant passages from contemporary writers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Methods facilitating noetic ascent -- Contraction as an ontological concept -- Contraction and noesis -- Contraction and memory -- Physiologically induced contraction -- The scholastic tradition of contraction -- Cusanus and the scholastic tradition of contraction.

This issue of Science in Context presents a collection of historical studies on various aspects of science and its practice as developed in Latin-American contexts. Relatively few scholars working in the history of science, and even in the more general field of “science studies,” have devoted their research to this field. Likewise, relatively little research has been done by scholars of Latin American studies on the cultural, political, and social impact of science, a field that is usually considered to be (...) one of the central, defining aspects of modern, Western civilization. (shrink)