BackgroundThe potential contribution of community engagement to addressing ethical challenges for international biomedical research is well described, but there is relatively little documented experience of community engagement to inform its development in practice. This paper draws on experiences around community engagement and informed consent during a genetic cohort study in Kenya to contribute to understanding the strengths and challenges of community engagement in supporting ethical research practice, focusing on issues of communication, the role of field workers in 'doing ethics' on (...) the ground and the challenges of community consultation.MethodsThe findings are based on action research methods, including analysis of community engagement documentation and the observations of the authors closely involved in their development and implementation. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis has been used for documentation of staff meetings and trainings, a meeting with 24 community leaders, and 40 large public and 70 small community group meetings. Meeting minutes from a purposive sample of six community representative groups have been analysed using a thematic framework approach.ResultsField workers described challenges around misunderstandings about research, perceived pressure for recruitment and challenges in explaining the study. During consultation, leaders expressed support for the study and screening for sickle cell disease. In community meetings, there was a common interpretation of research as medical care. Concerns centred on unfamiliar procedures. After explanations of study procedures to leaders and community members, few questions were asked about export of samples or the archiving of samples for future research.ConclusionsCommunity engagement enabled researchers to take account of staff and community opinions and issues during the study and adapt messages and methods to address emerging ethical challenges. Field workers conducting informed consent faced complex issues and their understanding, attitudes and communication skills were key influences on ethical practice. Community consultation was a challenging concept to put into practice, illustrating the complexity of assessing information needs and levels of deliberation that are appropriate to a given study. (shrink)

The importance of communities in strengthening the ethics of international collaborative research is increasingly highlighted, but there has been much debate about the meaning of the term ‘community’ and its specific normative contribution. We argue that ‘community’ is a contingent concept that plays an important normative role in research through the existence of morally significant interplay between notions of community and individuality. We draw on experience of community engagement in rural Kenya to illustrate two aspects of this interplay: (i) that (...) taking individual informed consent seriously involves understanding and addressing the influence of communities in which individuals’ lives are embedded; (ii) that individual participation can generate risks and benefits for communities as part of the wider implications of research. We further argue that the contingent nature of a community means that defining boundaries is generally a normative process itself, with ethical implications. Community engagement supports the enactment of normative roles; building mutual understanding and trust between researchers and community members have been important goals in Kilifi, requiring a broad range of approaches. Ethical dilemmas are continuously generated as part of these engagement activities, including the risks of perverse outcomes related to existing social relations in communities and conditions of ‘half knowing’ intrinsic to processes of developing new understandings. (shrink)

Modern hukukta alenilik, terim olarak, yargılamanın kamuya açık şekilde yapılmasını ifade eden bir ilkenin adıdır. Hukuk dilinde “aleniyet ilkesi” denildiğinde kastedilen kural olarak budur. Aleniyet ilkesi, toplumda yargıya ve hukuka güvenin sağlanması, dava taraflarının haklarının korunması ve kamu vicdanında adalet duygusunun tatmin edilmesi bakımından önemlidir. Bunun için de öteden beri yargılamanın kamuya açık gerçekleşme gerekliliği üzerinde durulmuş ve bu husus günümüz hukuk düşüncesinde önemli bir ilke olarak yerini almıştır. Bu makalenin amacı, hukuk tarihinde önemli bir yeri olan aleniliğin (...) tanımı yapılarak, İslâm hukukunun erken döneminde ceza yargılamasında aleniliğin nasıl sağlandığını tespit etmektir. Yargılamada alenilik, tarihin eski devirlerindeki imkânlar nispetinde doğrudan katılım ile sağlandığından, İslâm hukukunun erken döneminde kullanılan muhakeme mekânlarının tespiti konu açısından son derece önemlidir. Bu konuda mahkemelerin kurumsal nitelik kazanmasından önce karşımıza mescitler ve kamuya açık diğer mekânlar çıkmaktadır. Ayrıca yargılama sürecinin işleyişinde uygulanan prosedür, çeşitli işlemlerle görevlendirilen yardımcılar ve yargılama şahitleri de sürecin aleni olmasına katkı sağlamıştır. (shrink)

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2005, held in Elliottville, NY, USA in September 2005. The 30 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 82 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on vagueness, uncertainty, and gradation; paths and routes; ontologies and semantics; ontologies and spatial relations; spatial reasoning: cognitive maps and spatial reasoning; time, change, and dynamics; landmarks and navigation; geographic information, and spatial behaviour.

Truths are determined not by what we believe, but by the way the world is. Or so realists about truth believe. Philosophers call such theories correspondence theories of truth. Truthmaking theory, which now has many adherents among contemporary philosophers, is the most recent development of a realist theory of truth, and in this book D. M. Armstrong offers the first full-length study of this theory. He examines its applications to different sorts of truth, including contingent truths, modal truths, truths about (...) the past and the future, and mathematical truths. In a clear, even-handed and non-technical discussion he makes a compelling case for truthmaking and its importance in philosophy. His book marks a significant contribution to the debate and will be of interest to a wide range of readers working in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

The role of the environment in producing the correct classical limit in the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics is investigated, in the context of a model of quantum Brownian motion. One of the effects of the interaction is to produce a rapid approximate diagonalisation of the reduced density matrix in the position representation. This effect is, by itself, insufficient to produce generically quasi-classical behaviour of the Bohmian trajectory. However, it is shown that, if the system particle is initially in an (...) approximate energy eigenstate, then there is a tendency for the Bohmian trajectory to become approximately classical on a longer time-scale. The relationship between this phenomenon and the behaviour of the Wigner function post-decoherence is discussed. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics is a fundamentally probabilistic theory (at least so far as the empirical predictions are concerned). It follows that, if one wants to properly understand quantum mechanics, it is essential to clearly understand the meaning of probability statements. The interpretation of probability has excited nearly as much philosophical controversy as the interpretation of quantum mechanics. 20th century physicists have mostly adopted a frequentist conception. In this paper it is argued that we ought, instead, to adopt a logical or Bayesian (...) conception. The paper includes a comparison of the orthodox and Bayesian theories of statistical inference. It concludes with a few remarks concerning the implications for the concept of physical reality. (shrink)

Meyer, Kent and Clifton (MKC) claim to have nullified the Bell-Kochen-Specker (Bell-KS) theorem. It is true that they invalidate KS's account of the theorem's physical implications. However, they do not invalidate Bell's point, that quantum mechanics is inconsistent with the classical assumption, that a measurement tells us about a property previously possessed by the system. This failure of classical ideas about measurement is, perhaps, the single most important implication of quantum mechanics. In a conventional colouring there are some remaining patches (...) of white. MKC fill in these patches, but only at the price of introducing patches where the colouring becomes ``pathologically'' discontinuous. The discontinuities mean that the colours in these patches are empirically unknowable. We prove a general theorem which shows that their extent is at least as great as the patches of white in a conventional approach. The theorem applies, not only to the MKC colourings, but also to any other such attempt to circumvent the Bell-KS theorem (Pitowsky's colourings, for example). We go on to discuss the implications. MKC do not nullify the Bell-KS theorem. They do, however, show that we did not, hitherto, properly understand the theorem. For that reason their results (and Pitowsky's earlier results) are of major importance. (shrink)

In De Partibus Animalium I Aristotle sets out his philosophy of biology, discussing cause, necessity, soul, genus, and species, definition by logical division, and general methodology. In De Generatione Animalium I he applies his hylomorphic philosophy to the problem of animal reproduction. The translation is close, and includes passages from De Generatione Animalium II which complete Aristotle's theory of reproduction. The notes interpret Aristotle's arguments and discuss his views on major issues such as natural teleology. The original edition was published (...) in 1972. (shrink)

The generic Bohmian trajectories are calculated for an isolated particle in an approximate energy eigenstate, for an arbitrary one-dimensional potential well. It is shown that the necessary and sufficient condition for there to be a negligible probability of the trajectory deviating significantly from the classical trajectory at any stage in the motion is that the state be a narrowly localised wave packet. The properties of the Bohmian trajectories are compared with those in the interpretation recently proposed by García de Polavieja. (...) The reasons why the latter tend to be much more nearly classical are discussed. The implications for other trajectory interpretations are considered. (shrink)

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

The globalized societies of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are de-composing, according to Bernard Stiegler. This decay is expressed by breakdown in the compositional pr...

Convinced that reason is far from transparent to itself, Michael Polanyi, even in the earliest of his non-scientific texts, sets about the work of exposing the influence of unacknowledged presuppositions, commitments, and mental dispositions. Beginning in 1950 he identifies certain of those dispositions as “moral passions,” but in earlier texts he explores this feature of experience in a variety of tentative, preliminary ways that mark stages in the shaping of his moral anthropology. Set alongside “To the Peacemakers” (1917) and the (...) final section of Science, Faith and Society (1946), “Forms of Atheism” (1948) offers an instructive moment in this development. The three contrasting analyses all point toward and illuminate the mature account of moral passion (and the associated theory of moral inversion) that supersedes them. (shrink)

Every quantum state can be represented as a probability distribution over the outcomes of an informationally complete measurement. But not all probability distributions correspond to quantum states. Quantum state space may thus be thought of as a restricted subset of all potentially available probabilities. A recent publication (Fuchs and Schack, arXiv:0906.2187v1, 2009) advocates such a representation using symmetric informationally complete (SIC) measurements. Building upon this work we study how this subset—quantum-state space—might be characterized. Our leading characteristic is that the inner (...) products of the probabilities are bounded, a simple condition with nontrivial consequences. To get quantum-state space something more detailed about the extreme points is needed. No definitive characterization is reached, but we see several new interesting features over those in Fuchs and Schack (arXiv:0906.2187v1, 2009), and all in conformity with quantum theory. (shrink)

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

In this short text, a distinguished philosopher turns his attention to one of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical problems of all: How it is that we are able to sort and classify different things as being of the same natural class? Professor Armstrong carefully sets out six major theories—ancient, modern, and contemporary—and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each. Recognizing that there are no final victories or defeats in metaphysics, Armstrong nonetheless defends a traditional account of universals as the (...) most satisfactory theory we have.This study is written for advanced students, but as Armstrong goes considerably beyond his earlier work on this topic, it will interest professional scholars as well. Carefully plotted and clearly written, Universals is both a paradigm of exposition and a case study on the value of careful analysis of fundamental issues in philosophy. (shrink)

D. M. MacKinnon; I *—The Presidential Address: Idealism and Realism: An Old Controversy Renewed, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1.

Breaking new ground in the debate about the relation of mind and body, David Armstrong's classic text - first published in 1968 - remains the most compelling and comprehensive statement of the view that the mind is material or physical. In the preface to this new edition, the author reflects on the book's impact and considers it in the light of subsequent developments. He also provides a bibliography of all the key writings to have appeared in the materialist debate.

Euro Women's Independent Label Distribution (WILD) was a pan-European network of feminist music distributors active in the early 1980s. They were affiliated to WILD, the US-based Women's Music distribution network founded in 1979 to disseminate the growing corpus of Women's Music emerging from the US Women's Liberation Movement (WLM). This article presents an interpretation of archive materials that document Euro WILD's activities from the Women's Revolutions Per Minute archive, housed at the Women's Art Library, London. Constrained and enabled by the (...) archive materials on offer, I revisit some of the practical and political problems the network faced as European distributors of US Women's Music. Key issues explored include the perception of US cultural imperialism by women based in Europe and the affective politics that circulated transnationally between distributors. Finally, this article explores how the concept and practice of the Women's Music industry changed when women beyond the borders of the US engaged with it. (shrink)

The women’s liberation movements that emerged in Britain in the late 1960s are rarely thought of through their relationship with technology and technical knowledge. To overlook this is to misunderstand the movement’s social, cultural and economic interventions; it also understates how the technical environment conditioned the emergence of autonomous, women-centred politics. This article draws on archival evidence to demonstrate how the autonomous women’s liberation movement created experimental social contexts that enabled de-skilled, feminised social classes to confront their technical environment and (...) the deficits they experienced within it. The context for forging such politics was the workshop. More than a one-off, skill-sharing event, the workshop was a mobile habitus, adapted from a Marxist craft politics that prioritised the distribution of collective knowledge and responsibility and enabled the realisation of women's self-determination and autonomy. The workshop was discursively extended through women-authored publications in the 1970s and 1980s and designated a specific orientation within knowledge that supported women to practise a range of technical knowledge and gain expertise. An important, and largely forgotten political legacy of women's liberation is its world-making activisms: how it created social contexts that supported de-skilled, feminised classes to substantially intervene, shape and re-build their environments. Such histories can inspire how we practise politics today within an environment characterised, some theorists claim, by dramatic scales of de-skilling and dispossession. (shrink)

Dowsing, water-witching, divining – the procedure seeks a flow or spring beneath the surface of earth. So too this inquiry attempts to locate and sound the meanings associated with the polestar of Thalean considerations, ὕδωρ, that course beneath the interpretative strata of an overly-familiar tradition grounded in the principles of clarity and intelligibility. If these principles are held in suspension, what meanings flow from the Thalean considerations of ὕδωρ? A twofold task guides this inquiry. First is to show opacity as (...) the primary valence of ὕδωρ, challenging the prevailing tendency to imagine Thales and other Milesian thinkers as positing a principle of clarity in the form of what can be brought under the Aristotelean concept of underlying thing and matter. Second, in the course of drawing up the opacity of ὕδωρ form varied archaic sources emerge some connections to important terms for Greek thinking: φύσις, λόγος, ἀλήθεια. (shrink)

Onderwerp en gezegde, door D. M. Bakker.--Enkele opmerkingen over het Godsbegrip van Justinus Martyr, door J. den Boeft.--Heidegger, Descartes, Luther, door J. van der Hoeven.--"Geschichtlichkeit" bij Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, door G. Horsman.--Menselijke ontmaskering en Bijbels démasqué , door R. Huson.--Kleine geschiedenis van het begrip "niets" in de antieke wijsbegeerte (tot e met de Sofisten en Plato), door P. A. Meijer.--De structuur van opvoeden en opvoedkunde, door J. W. Mojet.--Individualiteit in de fysica, door M. D. (...) Stafleu. (shrink)

Background: There is general consensus internationally that unfair distribution of the benefits of research is exploitative and should be avoided or reduced. However, what constitutes fair benefits, and the exact nature of the benefits and their mode of provision can be strongly contested. Empirical studies have the potential to contribute viewpoints and experiences to debates and guidelines, but few have been conducted. We conducted a study to support the development of guidelines on benefits and payments for studies conducted by the (...) KEMRI-Wellcome Trust programme in Kilifi, Kenya. Methods: Following an initial broad based survey of cash, health services and other items being offered during research by all programme studies (n = 38 studies), interviews were held with research managers (n = 9), and with research staff involved in 8 purposively selected case studies (n = 30 interviewees). Interviews explored how these ‘benefits’ were selected and communicated, experiences with their administration, and recommendations for future guidelines. Data fed into a consultative workshop attended by 48 research staff and health managers, which was facilitated by an external ethicist.FindingsThe most commonly provided benefits were medical care (for example free care, and strengthened quality of care), and lunch or snacks. Most cash given to participants was reimbursement of transport costs (for example to meet appointments or facilitate use of services when unexpectedly sick), but these payments were often described by research participants as benefits. Challenges included: tensions within households and communities resulting from lack of clarity and agreement on who is eligible for benefits; suspicion regarding motivation for their provision; and confusion caused by differences between studies in types and levels of benefits. Conclusions: Research staff differed in their views on how benefits should be approached. Echoing elements of international benefit sharing and ancillary care debates, some research staff saw research as based on goodwill and partnership, and aimed to avoid costs to participants and a commercial relationship; while others sought to maximise participant benefits given the relative wealth of the institution and the multiple community needs. An emerging middle position was to strengthen collateral or indirect medical benefits to communities through collaborations with the Ministry of Health to support sustainability. (shrink)