Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...) were younger age and female sex in the United States, and male sex in Mali. Scores in the United States were higher than in Mali (P = 0.005). Despite this difference participants at both sites were well informed overall. Although interpretation must be qualified because questionnaires were not intended as research tools and were not standardized among sites, these results do not support concerns about systematic low understanding among research participants in developing versus developed countries. (shrink)

The congregation is challenged by modern times that require various life adjustments, including priestly pastoral ministry. Therefore, this study examined the pastoral ministry style for the parishioner’s rural community of St. Petrus Paulus Ampah Diocese in Palangka Raya. A descriptive qualitative approach was used with data collected using participatory observations, in-depth interviews and document studies. Furthermore, the data analysis involved reducing, displaying and process verification. The participants included parish priests, catechists and station council administrators. The results showed that the congregations (...) did not participate in church activities because the pastoral ministry style did not fulfil their needs, economic factors and lack of Catholic faith knowledge. Therefore, the church authorities in pastoral ministry should create a holistic and transformative congregation based on their needs. The current pastoral ministry practice is based on ecclesiastical organisation building and worship (liturgy) focused service. The church should simultaneously conduct catechism practices and charitable diaconia such as social, economic and spiritual activities. This was an interdisciplinary study that focused on practical and pastoral theology, catechesis and social sciences on Catholics’ pastoral ministry style for rural communities.Contribution: Importantly, it contributes to the literature on pastoral style reforms focusing on the congregation’s socio-economic life. Therefore, it can improve the congregation’s interests, ecclesiastical activities and independence. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed numerous weaknesses in pandemic preparedness and response, including underfunding, inadequate surveillance, and inequitable distribution of countermeasures. To overcome these weaknesses for future pandemics, WHO released a zero draft of a pandemic treaty in February, 2023, and subsequently a revised bureau's text in May, 2023. COVID-19 made clear that pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response reflect choices and value judgements. These decisions are therefore not a purely scientific or technical exercise, but are fundamentally grounded in ethics. The latest (...) treaty draft reflects these ethical considerations by including a section entitled Guiding Principles and Approaches. Most of these principles are ethical—they establish core values that undergird the treaty. Unfortunately, the treaty draft's set of principles are numerous, overlapping, and show inadequate coherence and consistency. We propose two improvements to this section of the draft pandemic treaty. First, key guiding ethical principles should be clearer and more precise than they currently are. Second, the link between ethical principles and policy implementation should be clearly established and define boundaries on acceptable interpretation, ensuring that signatories abide by these principles. (shrink)

Foundation models such as GPT-4 are fine-tuned to avoid unsafe or otherwise problematic behavior, such as helping to commit crimes or producing racist text. One approach to fine-tuning, called reinforcement learning from human feedback, learns from humans' expressed preferences over multiple outputs. Another approach is constitutional AI, in which the input from humans is a list of high-level principles. But how do we deal with potentially diverging input from humans? How can we aggregate the input into consistent data about "collective" (...) preferences or otherwise use it to make collective choices about model behavior? In this paper, we argue that the field of social choice is well positioned to address these questions, and we discuss ways forward for this agenda, drawing on discussions in a recent workshop on Social Choice for AI Ethics and Safety held in Berkeley, CA, USA in December 2023. (shrink)

Frequent public uproar over forms of data science that rely on information about people demonstrates the challenges of defining and demonstrating trustworthy digital data research practices. This paper reviews problems of trustworthiness in what we term pervasive data research: scholarship that relies on the rich information generated about people through digital interaction. We highlight the entwined problems of participant unawareness of such research and the relationship of pervasive data research to corporate datafication and surveillance. We suggest a way forward by (...) drawing from the history of a different methodological approach in which researchers have struggled with trustworthy practice: ethnography. To grapple with the colonial legacy of their methods, ethnographers have developed analytic lenses and researcher practices that foreground relations of awareness and power. These lenses are inspiring but also challenging for pervasive data research, given the flattening of contexts inherent in digital data collection. We propose ways that pervasive data researchers can incorporate reflection on awareness and power within their research to support the development of trustworthy data science. (shrink)

In our study, we examine the association between hedge fund activism and a target firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and whether activists can promote socially responsible investments while upholding shareholders’ interests. Using different matched samples, we find a strong positive association between the target firm’s CSR in the year before it is targeted by activists and its probability of being targeted by a hedge fund. Classifying hedge fund activists into socially and non-socially responsible funds based on their objectives, we (...) find that both give similar level of consideration to a firm’s CSR activities when initiating campaigns. Similar to DesJardine and Durand (DesJardine and Durand, Strategic Management Journal 41:1054–1082, 2020), we demonstrate that hedge funds have, on average, a negative impact on target firms’ CSR in the years following the initial investments. Complementary to DesJardine and Durand (DesJardine and Durand, Strategic Management Journal 41:1054–1082, 2020), we compare the two types of hedge funds and find an asymmetric effect of the hedge funds’ campaigns. Socially responsible hedge fund campaigns are associated with a large _increase_ in their target’s CSR, whereas non-socially responsible hedge funds _decrease_ this measure in their target. Finally, we find that target firms exhibit a long-term improvement in future stock returns and profitability. These findings provide evidence that certain types of activists, such as socially responsible funds, promote both _stakeholder_ and _shareholders’_ long-term interests. (shrink)

Initial vaccine allocations for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) will be limited. It is crucial to assess the ethical values associated with different methods of allocation, as well as important scientific and practical questions. This Viewpoint identifies three ethical values, benefiting people and limiting harm; prioritizing disadvantaged populations; and equal concern for all. It then explains why these values support prioritizing three groups: health care workers; other essential workers and people in high-transmission settings; and people with medical vulnerabilities associated with (...) poorer COVID-19 outcomes. In contrast, two other groups, people over 65 without medical vulnerabilities and participants in clinical research, present more complex ethical questions. This prioritization also encompasses valuing direct benefits to vaccinated individuals, indirect benefits to individuals protected from spread of infection, and indirect health and socioeconomic benefits to those protected from harm as health system and societal functioning improve. Vaccine allocation that recognizes important ethical values and avoids arbitrariness, waste, and corruption can ensure that the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine is both fair and perceived as fair. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 can lead to respiratory failure. Some patients require extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support. During the current pandemic, health care resources in some cities have been overwhelmed, and doctors have faced complex decisions about resource allocation. We present a case in which a pediatric hospital caring for both children and adults seeks to establish guidelines for the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation if there are not enough resources to treat every patient. Experts in critical care, end-of-life care, bioethics, and (...) health policy discuss if age should guide rationing decisions. (shrink)

Informed consent documents are central to the informed consent process and are required for participation in clinical trials in the U.S. The primary purpose of the document is “to assist a prospect...

Death in the Clinic fills a gap in contemporary medical education by explicitly addressing the concrete clinical realities about death with which practitioners, patients, and their families continue to wrestle. Visit our website for sample chapters!

The life we considered normal was disrupted due to measures taken to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. Quarantine, isolation, social distancing, and community containment have influenced consumer behavior and contributed to the rapid development of e-commerce. In pandemic times, even those unfamiliar with the online environment have had to adapt and make acquisitions in this new manner. Hence, we focused our research on measuring the perception of consumers on how the restrictive measures imposed to limit the spread of (...) the COVID-19 virus had influenced their decision to buy a product or service from the online environment, given that purchases are highly subjective and influenced by cumulative effects of economic, social, psychological and behavioral factors. Our paper comes with additional insights from the literature. It adds empirical evidence that reveals that the number of transactions and the value per transaction increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlights that online purchases will continue as such even after the pandemic. (shrink)

To understand the endogenous components of the event-related brain potential (ERP), we must use data about the components' antecedent conditions to form hypotheses about the information-processing function of the underlying brain activity. These hypotheses, in turn, generate testable predictions about the consequences of the component. We review the application of this approach to the analysis of the P300 component. The amplitude of the P300 is controlled multiplicatively by the subjective probability and the task relevance of the eliciting events, whereas its (...) latency depends on the duration of stimulus evaluation. These and other factors suggest that the P300 is a manifestation of activity occurring whenever one's model of the environment must be revised. Tests of three predictions based on this “context updating” model are reviewed. Verleger's critique is based on a misconstrual of the model as well as a partial and misleading reading of the relevant literature. (shrink)

In biology—as in other scientific fields—there is a lively opposition between big and small science projects. In this commentary, I try to contextualize this opposition in the field of biomedicine, and I argue that, at least in this context, big science projects should come first.

INTRODUCTION The Questions of Medical Ethics Call him Andrew. His face is gaunt and unshaven but peaceful. His eyelids are gently closed. ...

For decades, worries about undue inducement have Pervaded clinical research, and are especially common when research is accompanied by payment or conducted in developing countries. Few ethical judgments carry as much moral opprobrium or are thought to undermine the ethical soundness of a clinical trial as thoroughly as undue inducement. Indeed, the admonition to prevent undue inducement is one of the few explicit instructions in the Common Rules requirements for informed consent.Despite their long history and pervasiveness, charges of undue inducement (...) in clinical research are almost always mistaken. Indeed, I will advance an even more radical claim: Aresearch trial that otherwise fulfills the fundamental ethical requirements for human subjects research inherently cannot create the possibility of undue inducement because substantial risk of serious harm isprecluded. Charges of undue inducement tend to express displaced and mislabeled ethical concerns about other aspects of human subjects research. Consequently, claims of undue inducement should rarely be made, and when they are advanced should be treated with skepticism, placing a heavy burden of proofon those advancing such charges. (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes Atul Gawande's book Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine, and What Matters in the End, draws upon both anecdotal stories and literary sources to highlight the importance of honest discussions as the end of life approaches. These discussions are particularly significant for older persons and terminally ill patients. Gawande believes that these discussions could be facilitated by more in-depth and focussed communication between the healthcare professional and the patient. Respecting the patient's values and priorities, and promoting a (...) sense of wellbeing and dignity are critical for quality care. (shrink)

Four ethical values — maximizing benefits, treating equally, promoting and rewarding instrumental value, and giving priority to the worst off — yield six specific recommendations for allocating medical resources in the Covid-19 pandemic: maximize benefits; prioritize health workers; do not allocate on a first-come, first-served basis; be responsive to evidence; recognize research participation; and apply the same principles to all Covid-19 and non–Covid-19 patients.

In this article, I present a new argument for God’s existence, which I term the argument from non-bruteness. The argument is premised on the idea that the fundamental structure of reality cannot be a brute fact and must have an ultimate reason. By focusing on the concept of self-evidence, I first examine the relationship between possible worlds and what I refer to as cognitive perspectives. I then argue that an ultimate explanation for reality's fundamental structure necessitates an absolute perspective—one that (...) fully grasps this explanation— thereby affirming the existence of God as the absolute subject who possesses it. I summarize the core ideas of the argument, provide a formal exposition, and address potential objections. (shrink)

We concur with Sommer et al. that the processing manifested by P300 is not necessarily conscious. We also note that Verleger is yet again adducing evidence that contradicts an assertion we never made.

In a period given to emphasizing diversity among humans, we would do well to explore diversity among forms of discourse and among forms of talk-in-interaction in particular. Among the speech-exchange systems, ordinary conversation has been claimed to be distinctive and fundamental, but questions have been raised about both claims. The resources for discriminating among speech-exchange systems are located in such generic organizations of practice as turn-taking, sequence organization, the organization of repair and the overall structural organization of episodes of interaction. (...) I try to show that `conversation' as a distinctive speech-exchange system is real and is not only a residual category, and that it is to be understood as the `basic' speech-exchange system, in part by reference to the distinctive turn-taking organization through which it is implemented. The `motivation' for having developed a formal account of this turn-taking organization is recounted, and that formal account is defended for its usability in the analytic explication of singular, contexted episodes of talk. The remainder of the article is given over to such an exemplary account - an examination of an episode of interaction during a testing session between a man whose brain hemispheres had been surgically separated and a researcher. (shrink)

Članek obravnava pravno teorijo, ki je prisotna v končnem delu Vebrovega spisa Etika. Prvi poizkus eksaktne logike nagonske pameti. Veber se le mimogrede ukvarja s teorijo prava, vendar njegov prispevek ni zanemarljiv. Vebrova Etika je logika nagonske pameti: Veber, gledano iz čistega predmetnoteoretičnega vidika, ne sestavlja zbirke moralnih zapovedi, ampak namerava orisati najsplošnejša formalna načela, ki določajo pravilnost nagonskega doživetja. Tega, kaj mora posameznik narediti v danem trenutku, logika nagonske pameti ne more povedati, ker je le formalna veda. »Most« med (...) formalnim in materialnim pristopom nravnemu problemu Veber najde v glasu vesti, ki svetuje posamezniku, kaj naj naredi v konkretnem delovanju. V soglasju s tem mora biti državno pravo osnovano na načelih nagonske logike, ker bi bilo drugače brez vsake veljavnosti. Pravo velja, v kolikor je utemeljeno na logiki, ki orisuje imanentna načela človeške narave; cilj prava je pospeševanje čim bolj pravilnega življenja posameznikov in družbe. Z druge strani vsebina tega prava ni enkrat za vselej določena in napisana, ampak vsakič izhaja iz hermenevtike, ki jo posamezniki in družba morajo izvršiti o sebi in o svoji naravi. Etika »zdravega razuma« in »povprečnega človeka« je po Vebru najboljši model za materialno izpopolnenje formalne nagonske logike. (shrink)

Defeasible argumentation has been applied successfully in several real-world domains in which it is necessary to handle incomplete and contradictory information. In recent years, there have been interesting attempts to carry out argumentation processes supported by massive repositories developing argumentative reasoning applications. One of such efforts builds arguments by retrieving information from relational databases using the DBI-DeLP framework; this article presents eDBI-DeLP, which extends the original DBI-DeLP framework by providing two novel aspects which refine the interaction between DeLP programs and (...) relational databases. First, we expand the expressiveness of dbi-delp programs by providing ways of controlling how the information in databases is recovered; this is done by introducing filters that enable an improved fine-grained control on the argumentation processes which become useful in applications, providing the semantics and the implementation of such filters. Second, we introduce an argument comparison criterion which can be adjusted at the level of literals to model particular features such as credibility and topic expertise, among others. These new tools can be particularly useful in environments such as medical diagnosis expert systems, decision support systems, or recommender systems based on argumentation, where datasets are often provided in the form of relational databases. (shrink)

Comprehensive in scope and research, this book will be a crucial resource for researchers in the medical sciences, as well as teachers and students alike.

Interview by Marco Emanuele of James Brusseau. October 27, 2021, The Science of Where. Topics include: AI ethics, Accelerationism, Decentralization.

This paper defends stage theory against the argument from diachronic counting. It argues that stage theorists can appeal to quantifier domain restriction in order to accommodate intuitions about diachronic counting sentences. Two approaches involving domain restriction are discussed. According to the first, domains of counting are usually restricted to stages at the time of utterance. This approach explains intuitions in many cases, but is theoretically costly and delivers wrong counts if diachronic counting is combined with fission or fusion. On the (...) second approach, domains of counting are usually restricted in an indeterminate way, so as to include at most one member of any maximal class of counterpart-interrelated stages (with respect to a certain utterance). This view can accommodate all the relevant intuitions about counting sentences, and it fits well with a new stage-theoretic view of reference that allows speakers to refer to both present and past stages. (shrink)

Many recent definitions of lying are based on the notion of what is said. This paper argues that says-based definitions of lying cannot account for lies involving non-literal speech, such as metaphor, hyperbole, loose use or irony. It proposes that lies should instead be defined in terms of assertion, where what is asserted need not coincide with what is said. And it points to possible implications this outcome might have for the ethics of lying.

In Emanuel Adler's distinctive constructivist approach to international relations theory, international practices evolve in tandem with collective knowledge of the material and social worlds. This book - comprising a selection of his journal publications, a new introduction and three previously unpublished articles - points IR constructivism in a novel direction, characterized as 'communitarian'. Adler's synthesis does not herald the end of the nation-state; nor does it suggest that agency is unimportant in international life. Rather, it argues that what mediates (...) between individual and state agency and social structures are communities of practice, which are the wellspring and repositories of collective meanings and social practices. The concept of communities of practice casts new light on epistemic communities and security communities, helping to explain why certain ideas congeal into human practices and others do not, and which social mechanisms can facilitate the emergence of normatively better communities. (shrink)

Emanuele Avallone, Patrice Bergeron, Dominique Laperle, Michael Quisinsky, Philippe Roy-Lysencourt et Karim Schelkens.

Back cover: Dieses Buch enthält die wichtigstern religionsphilosophischen Einsichten des bedeutenden evangelischen Theologen Emanuel Hirsch. Mit ihrer Verbindung von tiefem religiösem Ernst und unbedingter intellektueller Redlichkeit können sie in der inzwischen stark veränderten religiösen Landschaft immer noch als wegweisend angesehen werden. Demgegenüber fordern ideologische Restbestände aus der Epoche des Dritten Reiches zur kritischen Auseinandersetzung heraus. Doch ist ihre Rolle für diese Religionsphilosophie nur von untergeordneter Bedeutung.

Die aufgabe der grundlegung.--Das problem der wirklichkeit.--Das problem der ursachlichkeit.--Das problem der freiheit.--Die metaphysik des natürlischen gegenstandes.--Paradoxien.--Kritik des logismus.--Erlebnis und geltung.--Die methode der spychologie.--Die gegenstānde der psychologie.--Gesetze der allgemeinen psychologie.--Beschuss.