In the past two decades, individual explanations of scientific misconduct have increasingly given way to systemic explanations. Where did this interest in systemic factors come from? Given that research ethicists often present their interventions as responses to scientific misconduct, this article tests the hypothesis that these systemic explanations were triggered by high-visibility cases of scientific norm violation. It does so by examining why Dutch scientists in 2011 explained Diederik Stapel’s grand-scale data fabrication largely in systemic terms, whereas only fifteen years (...) earlier, in the René Diekstra affair, such explanations had been close to absent. Drawing on a wealth of historical sources, the article suggests that cases like Stapel’s as such do not explain why early 21st-century commentators exchanged individual explanations for systemic ones. Only against the background of an existing discourse of criticism of the science system, developed in the 1990s and 2000s in response to rapidly increasing competition for research funding, could the Stapel affair achieve notoriety as an example of how systemic factors provoke bad conduct. (shrink)

Means–ends decoupling, the institutionally induced implementation of ineffective practices, has become increasingly common. Extant theory suggests that means–ends decoupling has real consequences, which makes it unstable and difficult for organizations to sustain. Yet little is known of how, and with what outcomes, firms organize such means–ends decoupling. We examine organizing via multiple qualitative and longitudinal case studies of how Swedish fast fashion retailers implement and manage the collection of used garments. We find that firms combine two organizational arrangements: structural and (...) temporal core–compartment separations, which mitigate consequences of means–ends decoupling by obscuring and justifying efficiency gaps. Thereby we provide a theoretical explanation for how means–ends decoupling can persist over time. (shrink)

Balancing the rights and obligations of custodians and applicants in relation to access to biobanks is of utmost importance to guarantee trust and confidence. This study aimed to reveal which issues divide dif..

Interpretations of Poetry and Religion is the third volume in a new critical edition of the complete works of George Santayana that restores Santayana's original text and provides important new scholarly information.Published in the spring of 1900, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion was George Santayana's first book of critical prose. It developed his view that "poetry is called religion when it intervenes in life, and religion, when it merely supervenes upon life, is seen to be nothing but poetry." This statement (...) and the point of view it espoused contributed significantly to the debate between science and religion at the turn of the century, and its eloquence and clearsightedness continue to have an impact on current discussions about the nature of religion.Interpretations of Poetry and Religion affronted Santayana's peers with its assault on literary and religious pieties of the cultivated classes. William James called its philosophy of harmonious and integral ideal systems nothing less than "a perfection of rottenness."In his insightful introductory essay, Joel Porte observes that while Santayana's theory of correlative objects, his espousal of the "ideal" - the normal human affinity for abstraction - and exaltation of the imagination may have offended some at Harvard, these ideas had a significant influence on other Harvard scholars T.S. Eliot and Santayana's "truest disciple," Wallace Stevens.Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., heads the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at Texas A & M University. William G. Holzberger is a Professor of English at Bucknell University. Joel Porte is Whiton Professor of American Literature at Cornell University. (shrink)

Books and articles are written with titles like The Last Professors and The End of the University. Of course these headings should not be taken literally. What they indicate are deep changes in the nature of the university and in the understanding of what is a professor. They also demonstrate a profound malaise, especially - but not only-among academics in the Humanities. In this brief paper an attempt is made to understand what is happening. Universities have been changing from institutions (...) dedicated to specific "ends in themselves" into organizations geared towards the production of specific forms of outcome or product. Professors have become professionals in the service of such organizations. It is argued that these changes produce effects which pervert the internal aims of university teaching and research. They originate in a wider cultural, quasi-religious belief in mastery and control. (shrink)

" The primary U.S. goal in the Third World is to ensure that it remains open to U.S. economic penetration and political control. Failing this the United States exerts every effort to..

Thirty years ago, a number of human inborn errors in carbohydrate metabolism were explored with specific enzymatic tests on blood samples (hemolysates). Hereditary galactosemia was the first example. When the inoperative step in galactose metabolism was specified, the basis for the diet therapy used on the galactosemic infants, namely galactose‐free diet, could be shown to be securely founded.As far as galactose metabolism is concerned, the cells of the infant are faced with two problems: (i) the conversion of dietary lactose (galactosyl (...) glucose) to glucose and its catabolites involved in energy metabolism, and (ii) the conversion of dietary glucose or lactose to galactosyl units of glycolipids and glycoprotein cell structures.Subsequent studies on microorganisms revealed several types of hereditary defect in galactose metabolism. One type which permits the bacteria to develop a normal carbohydrate pattern in their cell walls includes an enzyme defect, like that described in the cells of the galactosemic infant. Two other types, with the inability to synthesize UDPGlc or UDPGal from glucose, do not permit the bacteria to build the fabric of the normal bacterial cell wall. This is the subject for discussion. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper is on what we understand when we are said to understand semiotic sequences, such as sentences, arguments, proofs, road indications, jokes, and works of art, and on how we can understand them. The theory of understanding defended here is psycho‐pragmatic, and it is anthropologically oriented. The contention is that we always understand significances: users of semiotic systems have an acceptance relation with a significance ≪[]: the conveyed proposition is modified by the universal rationality operator ≪, and by the (...) partial mood‐operator. We can understand significances by the fact that they are descriptively presented to the users of semiotic systems as common values of the community to which they belong and want to belong. (shrink)

The present essay includes an overview of key milestones in the development of computer ethics as a field of applied ethics. It also describes the ongoing debate about the proper scope of CE, as a subfield both in applied ethics and computer science. Following a brief description of the cluster of ethical issues that CE scholars and practitioners have generally considered to be the standard or "mainstream" issues comprising the field thus far, the essay speculates about the future direction of (...) CE and describes some theoretical and practical questions that will likely arise. (shrink)

One of the three central issues in Lloyd Humberstone's ‘Sufficiency and Excess’ is what he calls ‘the Complete Thought Issue’ (CTI, for short). This is the question of whether some declarative sentences have proposition radicals, rather than full-blown propositions, as their semantic values. My focus in this reply is exclusively on Humberstone's comments about CTI and on CTI more generally. The goal of Humberstone's discussion of CTI is to defend ‘[Kent] Bach's claim against Cappelen and Lepore's attacks’ (Humberstone, 2006, p. (...) 316). These ‘attacks’ on Bach are found in Cappelen and Lepore (2004). In section one I present CTI, in section two I evaluate Humberstone's defence of Bach, and in section three I discuss two solutions to CTI. (shrink)

Le libéralisme et la liberté des médias sont-ils intrinsèquement liés, comme les deux faces d’une même pièce ? À première vue, ils semblent des corollaires puisqu’ils dérivent tous les deux du principe de liberté. Les mé­dias auraient donc d’autant plus d’espace que le libéralisme serait soli­de­ment implanté politiquement et économiquement. Inversement, un rejet du libéralisme politique irait de pair avec un rejet de la liberté des médias. Cette simplicité est cependant trompeuse. Les médias ne forment pas un ensemble homogène ; (...) il y a médias et médias. Il en va de même pour l’autre terme de l’équation : le libéralisme, même dans ses formes les plus classiques, fonde d’une manière plus éclectique qu’on le croit les libertés. (shrink)

A reiteration of the main details of the case may be helpful. Euphiletus killed Eratosthenes and was prosecuted for premeditated homicide by Eratosthenes' relatives. The present speech, our sole source of information concerning the case, was written for the defendant, partially or totally, by a professional speechwriter, presumably Lysias. In this speech Euphiletus admits killing Eratosthenes. He pleads, however, that, since he killed Eratosthenes after catching him in the act of adultery with his own wife, this was a case of (...) justified homicide. At the same time, he denies a charge of the prosecution that he had killed Eratosthenes for reasons unrelated to the adultery. The speech was delivered before a court of fifty-one judges especially set up to judge such cases, as is attested elsewhere:T1Arist. Ath. Pol. 57.3: ‘If…a person admits that he has killed someone but claims that he had a right to do so, as, for instance, when he has surprised an adulterer in the act,… then the trial takes place in the Delphinion’. (shrink)

Introduction -- Sagesse et savoir théorique (Spinoza I) -- Naturalisme et religion révélée (Spinoza II) -- Un naturalisme ironique (Hume I) -- Théorie et pratique, et la pratique de la théorie (Spinoza et Hume) -- Science, sens commun et sagesse -- Science et religion -- Science et éthique -- Ethique et religion -- La fin de l'histoire -- Progrès et tradition.

This article contains a reply to Guido Vanheeswijck’s critical study of my book Vloeibare waarden. Politiek, zorg en onderwijs in de laatmoderne tijd. I respond to his criticisms on the following topics: what is behind the liquidity of values; conservatism and the sacred; autonomy and the transcendence of values. The discussion also contains insights relevant to these topics from the work of Leszek Kolakowki.