BackgroundClinical trials should be as inclusive as possible to facilitate equitable access to research and better reflect the population towards which any intervention is aimed. Informed by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Innovations in Clinical Trial Design and Delivery for the Under-served (INCLUDE) guidance, we audited oncology trials conducted by the Clinical Trials and Statistics Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research, London (ICR-CTSU) to identify whether essential documents were overtly excluding any groups and whether (...) sufficient data were collected to assess diversity of trial participants from groups suggested by INCLUDE as under-served by research in the UK.MethodsThirty cancer clinical trials managed by ICR-CTSU and approved between 2011–2021 were audited. The first ethics approved version of each trial’s protocol, patient information sheet, and patient completed questionnaire, together with the first case report forms (CRFs) version were reviewed. A range of items aligned with the INCLUDE under-served groups were assessed, including age, sex and gender, socio-economic and health factors. The scope did not cover trial processes in participating hospitals.ResultsData relating to participants’ age, ethnic group and health status were well collected and no upper age limit was specified in any trials’ eligibility criteria. 23/30 (77%) information sheets used at least one gendered term to address patients. Most CRFs did not specify whether they were collecting sex or gender and only included male or female categories. The median reading age for information sheets was 15–16 years (IQR: 14–15 – 16–17). Socio-economic factors were not routinely collected and not commonly mentioned in trial protocols.ConclusionsNo systemic issues were identified in protocols which would explicitly prevent any under-served group from participating. Areas for improvement include reducing use of gendered words and improving readability of patient information. The challenge of fully assessing adequate inclusion of under-served populations remains, as socio-economic factors are not routinely collected because they fall beyond the data generally required for protocol-specified trial endpoint assessments. This audit has highlighted the need to agree and standardise demographic data collection to permit adequate monitoring of the under-served groups identified by the NIHR. (shrink)

Lucy Allais presents an original interpretation of Kant's transcendental idealism. She argues that his distinction between things in themselves and things as they appear to us has both epistemological and metaphysical components. Kant is committed to a genuine idealism about things as they appear to us, but this is not a phenomenalist idealism. He is committed to the claim that there is an aspect of reality that grounds mind-dependent spatio-temporal objects, and which we cannot cognize, but he does not (...) assert the existence of distinct non-spatio-temporal objects. On Allais's account, we cannot understand Kant's idealism without a clear account of his notion of intuition and of the role of intuition in cognition: she understands Kantian intuitions as representations that give us acquaintance with the objects of thought. This enables us to make sense of Kant's central argument for his idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic, and to see why he takes the complete idealist position to be established there. (shrink)

This article suggests that institutional workshops of assay were significant experimental sites in early modern London. Master assayers at Goldsmiths’ Hall on Foster Lane, in the heart of the city, and at the Royal Mint, in the Tower, made trials to determine the precious-metal content of bullion, plate and coinage. The results of their metallurgical experiments directly impacted upon the reputations and livelihoods of London's goldsmiths and merchants, and the fineness of coin and bullion. Engaged in the separation and transformation (...) of matter, assayers and the affairs of their workshops were also a curiosity for those interested in the secrets of nature. Making use of a wide-ranging body of sources, including institutional court minutes, artisanal petitions, mercantile guidebooks, recipe books and natural-philosophical treatises, this article uncovers a complex culture of metropolitan expertise. We first examine the workshop spaces in which assayers undertook their professional activities, and their secretive corporate cultures. We turn next to the manuscript culture through which assayers codified and communicated knowledge, ‘secrets’ and techniques to broader urban audiences. Finally, we assess exchanges and tensions between assayers and the wider community of Londoners engaged in scientific knowledge production and dissemination. (shrink)

How is it that we think and refer in the first-person way? For most philosophers in the analytic tradition, the problem is essentially this: how two apparently conflicting kinds of properties can be reconciled and united as properties of the same entity. What is special about the first person has to be reconciled with what is ordinary about it. The range of responses reduces to four basic options. The orthodox view is optimistic: there really is a way of reconciling these (...) apparently contradictory properties as contained within the same thing. The heretical views are pessimistic and content to be so: there is no such way, and that is because there is simply nothing to reconcile – because there is really nothing special about what is in question; or there is really nothing ordinary about it; or there is really nothing …. (shrink)

This paper offers an intervention into the notion of narrativity. It aims to refract Ricœur’s hermeneutics of the subject through a more expanded account of the political dimension of narrative, both to situate the narrative self politically, and to flesh out the ethico-political (im)possibilities of self-disclosure. Focusing on the process of claiming asylum as an instance of politically precarious self-disclosure in which narrative is demanded as a marker of truthful identity, it will explore the limits of narrative as the mode (...) through which subjectivity is made intelligible. Through an analysis of the residues of power in the institution of language that qualify the emergence of the speaking subject and the socio-political assumptions we can excavate from the notion of narrative time, this paper will suggest that narrative unintelligibility could have politically transformative potential. (shrink)

While the existence of nature distinct from human influence becomes evermore suspect, within the natural sciences, human beings are increasingly understood in naturalistic terms. The collision of the human and natural, both within conceptual discourse and the reality of climate change may be considered a “great event” in the Hegelian sense, that reveals a dialectic immanent within the nature/culture distinction. Nishida’s notion of “historical nature,” Watsuji’s unique conception of climate, and the traditional satoyama landscapes of Japan offer timely ways of (...) understanding the sublation of the distinction between nature and culture that render the nature/spirit hierarchy found in Hegel obsolete. (shrink)

Environmental issues involve a wide range of actors often brought together in processes of collaborative environmental governance. Nonetheless, such actors frequently disagree on the definition of these issues. Even sharing an environmental concern does not preclude disagreements. This paper takes the concept of ecological embeddedness—so far analyzed in a single community—to explore differences of views among actors involved in collaborative environmental governance. It does so by pursuing a qualitative study of French River Basin Committees. Our findings show that Basin Committee (...) members take radically different approaches to ecological matters and therefore put forward opposing diagnoses and prognoses of their shared ecological context. We identify three dimensions of ecological embeddedness that are critical for collaborative governance, namely: ecological engagement; ecological ontology; and ecological knowledge. Our results indicate that different forms of ecological embeddedness can fuel long-lasting disagreements despite members’ shared appreciation of collaboration. This is especially so if the deliberations focus on ‘facts’—with actors pitting their ecological knowledge against one another—without facilitating discussions on ecological engagement and ontology. (shrink)

To sustainably govern a Social-Ecological System (SES), both the academic literature and practitioners recommend involving a broad range of actors—public or private—from the territory in question. Nonetheless, the presence of actors in collaborative SES governance processes is not a given. Since this presence requires time and energy without direct personal reward, it depends on the actors’ likelihood to embrace a stewardship role, which in turn depends on their relationship with their biophysical and social contexts. This paper studies the role played (...) by actors’ places of residence in their stewardship behavior in collaborative SES governance. To this end, we analyze the attendance patterns of over 600 members of a French River Basin Committee over 26 years, to shed light on the biophysical determinants. We find that individuals’ biophysical experience plays a critical role in motivating ‘place stewardship’ behavior—especially for key groups of actors such as farmers. We discuss the challenges that place stewardship poses for SESs and outline measures for fostering broader SES stewardship. (shrink)

The presbytery pavement of Novara Cathedral in Piedmont, which dates from the early twelfth century, includes the symbols of the four Evangelists on either side of where the altar once stood. The fourteenth-century ordinal for the cathedral indicates that these symbols were used as markers for participants in the prebaptismal ceremony known as the aurium apertio, in particular during the reading of the initial passages of the Gospels . This rare mention of the liturgical use of images in a figurative (...) floor mosaic challenges our preconceptions of what it might have meant to stand on an image and poses the question whether the pavement could have been designed with such a use in mind. However, several factors complicate the matter. Most important is the substantial gap in time between the laying of the floor and the writing of the manuscript, which means that the liturgical custom might equally have responded to the design of the floor. Secondly, there is the position of Novara as a suffragan diocese within the archdiocese of Milan, when the traditio evangeliorum was not part of the Milanese rite. Thirdly, there is the location of the symbols on the presbytery pavement, where they may not have been visible to the laity, although a central aspect of the rite is the explanation of the Evangelist symbols to the baptismal candidates. Taking these points into consideration, this article attempts to elucidate the relationship between pavement and ceremony. It traces the place of the traditio evangeliorum within the history of prebaptismal liturgy and considers the significance of the rite for those who took part in it, before examining the audience and function of both the readings of the Gospel initia and the mosaic symbols themselves. (shrink)

This article argues that the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) can productively use tragedy as a stimulus. We do this by following Ann Margaret Sharp’s interest in Simone Weil and supplementing it with Iris Murdoch’s writing on art and literature. Weil and Murdoch provide accounts of the moral value of attention that are both timely and enriching for the practice of philosophy for and with young people. This approach hinges on (i) an understanding of the particular affordances of tragedy as (...) attention-based literature and (ii) an attentive approach to stimulus presentation and exploration. Thus, we propose reading tragedies for neither their philosophical nor their cultural authority but rather because of the genre's unique affordances in relation to adolescents. Beginning by tracing Weil’s own educational practises (as a philosophy teacher in schools, and when instructing fellow workers), where she made extensive use of this genre, we move on to a broader exploration of the potential for attention Weil and Murdoch recognised in literature’s stimulation of imaginative exploration. With this in mind, we advocate for the pedagogical use of tragedies as a medium instructive in the limits of individual agency and the richness of reality. For to be moral, for Weil and Murdoch, means to be open to reality, and so to approach other people with attention. In our view, the moral values that inhabit tragedies are best explored through the community of philosophical inquiry, which can facilitate attention to the structure of adolescent experience; in particular, the conditions of adolescents who are in a moment of inheritance of a world beyond their control but in need of their care, experiencing a moment phenomenologically akin to Aristotle’s reversal and recognition. Therefore, tragedies, rather than speaking to us about the ancient past, can, in the CPI, meaningfully orient young people and those who work with them towards their present. (shrink)

This study aims to identify student attitudes to and perceptions of the topical phenomenon of plagiarism at the Faculty of Regional Development and International Studies at Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic. The paper includes a theoretical framework describing plagiarism, academic ethics and provides a different perspective on plagiarism by many authors. Furthermore, the article presents a semi-structured questionnaire conducted in July 2018 with a sample of 235 respondents. The questionnaire was used in this research to explore students’ personal experiences, (...) recommendations and other information relating to their attitudes to and perceptions of plagiarism. The results indicate that FRDIS students were familiar with the concept of plagiarism but not always able to clearly identify the correct answers. The recommendation for the Faculty, based on the data analysis, is to hold a tutorial on all the important aspects of plagiarism, such as citations, referencing, and common mistakes. This paper concludes that plagiarism can only be eliminated if it is tackled at the prevention phase, not merely through the use of warnings and threats. (shrink)

This article aims at studying the evolution of the woman-dragon relation by comparing texts from English and French medieval literature and contemporary fantasy literature texts, in French and English as well. We will first determine the similarities between the two corpora, especially regarding the narrative triad composed of the knight, the princess and the dragon. We will then deal with the reorganization of the narrative space by examining the shift in focalization from the knight to the woman and the dragon, (...) thus placing them as heroes of the story. We will eventually try to explain the evolution of the values born by these two characters and demonstrate if there is, or not, a new woman-dragon relation in contemporary literature. (shrink)

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and many more social networking sites are becoming mainstream in the lives of numerous individuals in the United States and around the globe. How these sites could potentially impact one's perception of community, as well as the ability to enhance strong social bonding, is an area of concern for many sociologists and criminologists. Current literature is discussed and framed through the lenses of social disorganization and social control theories as they relate to an individual's propensity to commit (...) crime/indiscretions and then post comments relating to those activities on social networking sites. The result is gained insight into the communal attributes of social networking and a contribution to the discussion of the relationship among the social components of the internet, criminal activity, and one's sense of community. Implications and areas of future research are also addressed. (shrink)

This paper looks at the possibilities of using biographical research in social work focusing on the elderly. Social work with the elderly uses or should use biographical data to create individual plans for clients or for the purpose of sensory activation. Narrative interviews are a form of interaction between a senior client and a social worker. The social worker supports the senior’s narrative so they can view their life for themselves and explain its meaning from their own perspective. The use (...) of sensory activation in social work is only possible when the individual’s identity is supported by a sufficient amount of environmental stimuli, which can be achieved only by acquiring and analyzing data on the life events of the individual. The paper contains examples of the use of biographical data in social work with the elderly, which is essential for further structuring their lives. (shrink)

Dès les premières lignes, Rachmi Diyah Larasati plonge le lecteur dans le sujet de son étude à travers ses propres souvenirs d’enfance, dans l’ambiance des soirées passées dans la cour de la maison familiale, petit monde féminin où elle a appris la danse avec sa grand-mère. Cette entrée en matière n’est pas anodine, puisque les travaux de R.D. Larasati ont pour première source sa propre expérience, complétée par les témoignages de plusieurs autres danseuses indonésiennes. À la fois danseuse f...

Craig Callender claims that ‘time is the great informer’, meaning that the directions in which our ‘best’ physical theories inform are temporal. This is intended to be a metaphysical claim, and as such expresses a relationship between the physical world and information-gathering systems such as ourselves. This article gives two counterexamples to this claim, illustrating the fact that time and informative strength doubly dissociate, so the claim cannot be about physical theories in general. The first is a case where physical (...) theories inform in directions that we have no reason to regard as temporal. The second is a case where our best physical theories fail to inform in directions that we have independent (pre-theoretic) reasons to regard as temporal. Taking these two cases into account suggests that the connection Callender makes between time and informativeness is perspectival. The second case demonstrates that although scientists often seek information in temporal directions, the behaviour of the physical world can present serious difficulties for finding it. In response, this article proposes a perspectival reading of Callender’s claim, according to which the connection between time and informative strength has more to do with the aims and objectives of science than the workings of the physical world. (shrink)

In this book, Lucy Jane Ward argues that although contemporary scholarship tends to divide Agnes Heller's work chronologically in terms of her “Marxist” and subsequent “post-Marxist” periods, a closer reading reveals her work as a continuing engagement both with and against Marx's idea of the human being rich in need.

This book considers the thought and personalities of two popular icons of twentieth century philosophical and psychological thought - Nietzsche and Jung - and reveals the extraordinary connections between them. Through a thorough examination of their work, Nietzsche and Jung succeeds in illuminating complex areas of Nietzsche's thought and resolving ambiguities in Jung's reception of these theories. This demonstration of how our understanding of analytical psychology can be enriched by investigating its philosophical roots will be of great interest to students (...) in psychology, philosophy and religion as well as practising Jungian analysts. (shrink)

La philosophy of mind est le terrain principal sur lequel Gilbert Ryle a mis à l'épreuve sa réponse personnelle à la question "Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?". Il nous montre comment la philosophie peut nous remettre sur la piste d'une meilleure compréhension des phénomènes humains. Cette philosophie de l'homme est ancrée dans une méthode qui a reçu le nom d'analyse du langage ordinaire : prêter une attention particulière à la façon dont nous parlons de nous-même et des autres devrait nous permettre (...) d'atteindre des conclusions positives. Lucie Antoniol nous propose ici une interprétation originale du célèbre ouvrage La notion d'esprit (1949) : l'argument de l'erreur de catégorie repose sur des catégories sémantiques et non ontologiques. C'est là un des apports philosophiques majeurs d'un philosophe dont on commence à peine à voir l'importance. (shrink)

Uptake is typically understood as the hearer’s recognition of the speaker’s communicative intention. According to one theory of uptake, the hearer’s role is merely as a ratifier. The speaker, by expressing a particular communicative intention, predetermines what kind of illocutionary act she might perform. Her hearer can then render this act a success or a failure. Thus the hearer has no power over which act could be performed, but she does have some power over whether it is performed. Call this (...) the ratification theory of uptake. Several philosophers have recently endorsed an alternative theory of uptake, according to which the hearer can determine the nature of the act the speaker performs. According to this theory, if the hearer regards an utterance as illocutionary act y, then it is act y, even if the speaker intended to perform act x. Call this the constitution theory of uptake. The purported advantage of this theory is that it identifies a common but underanalysed way in which speakers can be silenced. I argue that despite its initial intuitive pull, the constitution theory of uptake should be rejected. It is incompatible with ordinary intuitions about speech, it entails a conceptual impossibility, and it has unsavoury political implications, entailing that marginalised speakers barely qualify as agents. (shrink)

The notion of respect for autonomy dominates bioethical discussion, though what qualifies precisely as autonomous action is notoriously elusive. In recent decades, the notion of autonomy in medical contexts has often been defined in opposition to the notion of autonomy favoured by theoretical philosophers. Where many contemporary theoretical accounts of autonomy place emphasis on a condition of “authenticity”, the special relation a desire must have to the self, bioethicists often regard such a focus as irrelevant to the concerns of medical (...) ethics, and too stringent for use in practical contexts. I argue, however, that the very condition of authenticity that forms a focus in theoretical philosophy is also essential to autonomy and competence in medical ethics. After tracing the contours of contemporary authenticity-based theories of autonomy, I consider and respond to objections against the incorporation of a notion of authenticity into accounts of autonomy designed for use in medical contexts. By looking at the typical problems that arise when making judgments concerning autonomy or competence in a medical setting, I reveal the need for a condition of authenticity—as a means of protecting choices, particularly high-stakes choices, from being restricted or overridden on the basis of intersubjective disagreement. I then turn to the treatment of false and contestable beliefs, arguing that it is only through reference to authenticity that we can make important distinctions in this domain. Finally, I consider a potential problem with my proposed approach; its ability to deal with anorexic and depressive desires. (shrink)

A new therapeutic strategy could break the stalemate in the war on cancer by targeting not all cancerous cells but the small fraction that lie at the root of cancers. Lucie Laplane offers a comprehensive analysis of cancer stem cell theory, based on an original interdisciplinary approach that combines biology, biomedical history, and philosophy.

How could the initial, drastic decisions to implement “lockdowns” to control the spread of COVID-19 infections be justifiable, when they were made on the basis of such uncertain evidence? We defend the imposition of lockdowns in some countries by first, and focusing on the UK, looking at the evidence that undergirded the decision, second, arguing that this provided us with sufficient grounds to restrict liberty given the circumstances, and third, defending the use of poorly-empirically-constrained epidemiological models as tools that can (...) legitimately guide public policy. (shrink)

This book examines the promise of and issues related to preparing teachers for cultural diversity through community engagement in the liberal arts colleges. The field of teacher education and small liberal arts colleges will find in Teacher Education, Diversity, and Community Engagement in Liberal Arts Colleges an excellent reason to enact purposeful change and transformation.

In a recent article, Ethan Bradley and Mark Navin (2021) argue that vaccine refusal is not akin to free riding. Here, I defend one connection between vaccine refusal and free riding and suggest that, when viewed in conjunction with their other arguments, this might constitute a reason to mandate Covid-19 vaccination.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, high hopes were placed on digital contact tracing. Digital contact tracing apps can now be downloaded in many countries, but as further waves of COVID-19 tear through much of the northern hemisphere, these apps are playing a less important role in interrupting chains of infection than anticipated. We argue that one of the reasons for this is that most countries have opted for decentralised apps, which cannot provide a means of rapidly informing users (...) of likely infections while avoiding too many false positive reports. Centralised apps, in contrast, have the potential to do this. But policy making was influenced by public debates about the right app configuration, which have tended to focus heavily on privacy, and are driven by the assumption that decentralised apps are “privacy preserving by design”. We show that both types of apps are in fact vulnerable to privacy breaches, and, drawing on principles from safety engineering and risk analysis, compare the risks of centralised and decentralised systems along two dimensions, namely the probability of possible breaches and their severity. We conclude that a centralised app may in fact minimise overall ethical risk, and contend that we must reassess our approach to digital contact tracing, and should, more generally, be cautious about a myopic focus on privacy when conducting ethical assessments of data technologies. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was not only one of post-war Britain's most celebrated and prolific novelists - she was also an influential philosopher, whose work was concerned with the question of the good and how we can see our moral worlds more clearly. Murdoch believed that paying attention to art is a way for us to become less self-centred, and this book argues that cinema is the perfect form of art to enable us to do this. Bringing together Murdoch's moral philosophy and (...) contemporary cinema to build a dialogue about vision, ethics and love, author Lucy Bolton encourages us to view cinema as a way of studying other worlds and moral journeys, and to reflect upon their ethical significance in the world of the film and in our daily lives. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans B. Lindorfer & D. Naguschewski, Hegel. Zur Sprache. Beiträge zur europäischen Sprachreflexion, Tübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag, 2002. Nous remercions Lucie Bourassa ainsi que les éditeurs de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. On a maintes fois relevé des affinités entre la poétique de Mallarmé et la philosophie de Hegel. Le poète a vraisemblablement lu des textes du philosophe, il a du moins pris connaissance de quelques-unes de ses propositions grâce à son ami - (...) Linguistique et théorie du langage – Nouvel article. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a philosophical analysis of the act of ‘liking’ a post on social media. First, I consider what it means to ‘like’ something. I argue that ‘liking’ is best understood as a phatic gesture; it signals uptake and anoints the poster’s positive face. Next, I consider how best to theorise the power that comes with amassing many ‘likes’. I suggest that ‘like’ tallies alongside posts institute and record a form of digital social capital. Finally, I consider (...) whether ‘likes’ have ultimately improved online discourse. I argue that while the ‘liking’ function itself is relatively innocuous, public ‘like’ tallies introduce a corrosive motivation to online communication. By making the prospect of increased social capital perpetually salient to us, they encourage us to prioritise high levels of engagement over meaningful engagement. (shrink)

Actor network theory and supply chainmanagement theory provide suggestive researchdirections for understanding regional agri-foodnetworks. These theories claim that relationshipsbased upon trust and cooperation are critical to thestrength and vitality of the network. This means thatexploring and detailing these relationships among thesuppliers, producers, workers, processors, brokers,wholesalers, and retailers within specific regionalgeographies of these networks are critical forfurthering cooperation and trust. Key areas ofcooperation include resource sharing andapprenticeship programs. Employing food networks as akey unit of contextual analysis will deepen ourunderstanding of how (...) to enhance their resiliency andvibrancy. Important questions can be raised about thedifference gender makes for farmers, brokers,entrepreneurs, and workers in local food networks. (shrink)

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, high hopes were put on digital contact tracing, using mobile phone apps to record and immediately notify contacts when a user reports as infected. Such apps can now be downloaded in many countries, but as second waves of COVID-19 are raging, these apps are playing a less important role than anticipated. We argue that this is because most countries have opted for app configurations that cannot provide a means of rapidly informing users of (...) likely infections while avoiding too many false positive reports. Mathematical modelling suggests that differently configured apps have the potential to do this. These require, however, that some pseudonymised data be stored on a central server, which privacy advocates have cautioned against. We contend that their influential arguments are subject to two fallacies. First, they have tended to one-sidedly focus on the risks that centralised data storage entails for privacy, while paying insufficient attention to the fact that inefficient contact tracing involves ethical risks too. Second, while the envisioned system does entail risks of breaches, such risks are also present in decentralised systems, which have been falsely presented as ‘privacy preserving by design’. When these points are understood, it becomes clear that we must rethink our approach to digital contact tracing in our fight against COVID-19. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Etude des passions dans la philosophie et la littérature à l'âge classique, et de la façon dont Descartes, Hume, les matérialistes et les romanciers du XVIIe siècle pensaient cette notion.

« Le formalisme juridique conduisant à la reconnaissance officielle d’un saint n’a cessé de se durcir entre le XIIe et le XVIIIe siècle. Il n’a été quelque peu allégé que depuis 1969, en raison peut-être de l’engorgement de l’administration pontificale face au flot grossissant des causes introduites - une quarantaine par an en moyenne - ces dernières décennies » (J. P. Albert, « Hagiographie. L’écriture qui sanctifie », pp. 75-83). Résultat : « entre 1978 et 1989, Jean Paul II a (...) procédé à 123.. (shrink)

Au chapitre II de La Logique publiée en 1780, partie du Cours d’étude rédigé entre 1758 et 1767 à destination du Prince de Parme dont il était le précepteur, Condillac se sert du paradigme de la fenêtre forgé par Alberti afin de décrire la manière dont les représentations naissent dans l’esprit humain. L’enjeu est celui de la connaissance du monde extérieur : comment l’esprit humain peut-il acquérir des représentations ordonnées et fidèles d’un réel infini et changeant? Comment les représent...