Policy-makers use different decision-making strategies and base their decisions – more or less explicitly – on both expert knowledge and opinions in order to cope with the sheer complexity of societal challenges and the political environment. Most politicians rely to some extent on personal ideology in the implementation of public policies. Potential decision biases such as ‘repair service behavior’ – the human tendency to try fixing what appears to be most problematic at first – also influence decision-making. While ideology plays (...) a prominent role in politics, we know too little about its effect on political decision-making. Some researchers would argue that the use of ideology and repair service behavior facilitate the decision process, while others suggest that it adversely affects the ability to make objective decisions. Using a political microworld simulation that reproduces complex real-world problems, we investigate the effects of repair service behavior and personal ideology on performance in a dynamic decision-making task. Although repair service behavior was not associated with performance, the results suggest that personal ideology significantly impaired goal attainment. Despite clear instructions to be as objective as possible and think critically in completing the task, ideology was powerful enough to disrupt objective policy-making, as indicated by the deviation from optimal scores and the overall microworld task goal, i.e., to win votes and be re-elected by the end of the game. (shrink)

Building upon a non-standard understanding of evolutionary process focusing on variation and persistence, I will argue that communities and ecosystems can evolve by natural selection as emergent individuals. Evolutionary biology has relied ever increasingly on the modeling of population dynamics. Most have taken for granted that we all agree on what is a population. Recent work has reexamined this perceived consensus. I will argue that there are good reasons to restrict the term “population” to collections of monophyletically related replicators and (...) interactors, which explains why many existing models in population biology exclude by definition many genuine evolving biological individuals such as communities and ecosystems. By studying a case of community evolution (a symbiotic termite–fungus community), we will see that it is variation that is important to evolutionary processes, not populations. Variation within a population is only one of many types of variation that can lead to evolution by natural selection. The upshot of focusing on variation is that cases of community and ecosystem adaptive change become tractable in evolutionary terms. I will show that complex emergent individuals such as communities and ecosystems cannot be fully accommodated by conventional population/reproduction models but can be accommodated by variation/persistence models. (shrink)

"Die Tat" concerns the effort to recapture a particular memory. In searching to recover that memory trace the writer discovers that the memory datum itself diffuses and breaks up into the present remembering action of the one who remembers. The essay anatomizes that process of diffusion, and tries to come up with a definition of memory.

In his book, Emre Şan undertakes a confrontation between Merleau-Ponty and Patočka on the question of transcendence understood as a phenomenological problem,indeed as the problem of phenomenology. This approach has the great merit of identifying the meaning of being of Being as promise, on the path of an ontology beyondHusserl and Heidegger. Emre Şan’s book thus offers a very important contribution to phenomenological studies.

On a souvent dit que la bioéthique émergea au confluent des sciences de la santé, de la théologie, de la philosophie et du droit. Or, pour poursuivre son évolution, la bioéthique se doit d’adopter une position critique vis-à-vis de cet héritage, notamment en ce qui concerne le droit.

I want in this paper to do two things. First, I want to respond to some studies that argue that people are often not rational: that people regularly and systematically depart from rationality. The conclusion itself does not worry me. I pressed for the same in a recent book. But the arguments seem to me wrong, and wrong in an interesting way. There may be something to be learned from seeing how and why they fail.

Identifies and explores the core philosophical issues in social work, such as political, moral, and logical issues and speculates about their relevance to practice.

This is a translation from the Russian of Nikolai Lossky’s review of Henri Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (1932). The review was published in the Parisian émigré journal Новый Град (Cité nouvelle) in 1932. In this review, Lossky criticizes Bergson for leaving some key problems of the philosophy of religion unresolved, namely that of God’s relation to the world (theism vs. pantheism), that of immortality, as well as that of evil. He also criticizes Bergson’s (...) “extreme biologism” in his explanation of morality, which, in his view, subjectivizes the objects of religion. For Lossky, the symbolic images of the Christian religion are not subjective “fabulations,” but real symbols through which God reveals himself to us. Likewise, according to Lossky, true morality cannot be explained in terms of biological adaptation, but must rely on the foundation of an objective, i.e., Platonic, axiological sphere. (Frédéric Tremblay). (shrink)

Clinical trials aim to minimise participant risk and generate new clinical knowledge for the wider population. Many military agencies are now investing efforts in pushing towards developing new treatments involving Brain-Computer Interfaces, Gene Therapy and Stem Cells interventions. These trials are targeting smaller disease groups, as such they give rise to novel participant risks of harms that are largely not accommodated by existing practice. This is of most concern with irreversible harms at early trial stages, where participants may forfeit any (...) future therapy, and in personalised medicine, where the individual participant assumes all of the trial risk. Given these new experimental interventions involve high risk of irreversible harms, how much risk should patients be exposed to when participating in experimental testing of innovative technologies? Designing clinical trials which better balance risk/benefit ratios for participants is crucial. The aim of this book chapter is to suggest a new stratified risk framework aimed at minimising the risk-benefit ratio to participants in clinical trials associated with high risk of irrevocable harms. We will argue it demands a higher-level of clinical data capture at earlier trial stages than predicated by current trial doctrine; it also requires publication of all trial data to minimise risk to participants of any future trial. (shrink)

The article is a lightly edited transcript of a digital roundtable discussion. The participants were invited based on their prior work on critical realism and epistemology. The roundtable discussion includes introductory statements on judgemental rationality by Jamie Morgan, Ruth Groff, Dorothea Schoppek, Leigh Price, and Frédéric Vandenberghe, followed by a discussion between the participants on a variety of topics related to judgemental rationality. The discussion demonstrates a variety of opinions and perspectives, as well as the clashing of opinions in (...) a respectful manner. The roundtable provides interesting discussion points about Bhaskar's approach to judgemental rationality, how we adjudicate between different meta-theories (such as between that of Bhaskar and Harré), and what role should normative values have in theoretical adjudication. (shrink)

La Seconde Guerre mondiale venait à peine de s'achever quand le hasard fit de Frédéric de Towarnicki le premier visiteur de Heidegger dans l'Allemagne ne cendres, verrouillée de toute part. Quel " coup de dés " l'avait donc conduit dans Fribourg en ruine, à la recherche de ce philosophe dont on ne savait rien depuis des années? Le récit insolite, parfois drôle, de ses rencontres avec Heidegger dans sa maison de Zähringen ou sur les routes de la Forêt-Noire est (...) suivi de vingt-trois conversations avec Jean Beaufret qui fut, durant plus de trente ans, l'ami et l'interlocuteur du penseur le plus audacieux et le plus attaqué de notre temps. La passion qui anime ce livre pourrait bien, au-delà des polémiques, révéler au lecteur la surprenante simplicité à laquelle aboutissent les méditations de Heidegger. (shrink)

The use of the human microbiome as a subject of study for forensic purposes raises a number of issues, ranging from a challenge to our traditional concept of identity to respect for privacy and the type of consent to be obtained when a microbiome sample is taken. The particular nature of this study requires the joint work of a multidisciplinary team made up of specialists in ethics, forensic science, law, microbiology, philosophy and political science.

New 'states of violence' are changing how we think about war and peace, as terrorists attacks, insurgencies, precision missiles, and a belief that conflict can avoid casualties all demonstrate a shift of focus from the state to the individual.

The hypothesis that every class of facts has an explanation is never refuted by evidence, But is confirmed every time any hypothesis is confirmed. Hence, It is the most highly confirmed hypothesis of all, And, Therefore, Should be considered to be true. If it is true, Then there is an explanation of the class of all facts, And this explanation may be identified with god.

This study examines Russian politics in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras using sociologist Robert Merton’s middle-range theory. It analyzes ideology, decision making, political culture, public opinion, and democratization and offers an innovative approach to the study of Russian politics in the twenty-first century.