The study aimed to explore the subjective need of healthcare professionals for ethics consultation, their experience with ethical conflicts, and expectations and objections toward a Clinical Ethics Committee. Staff at a university hospital took part in a survey (January to June 2010) using a questionnaire with open and closed questions. Descriptive data for physicians and nurses (response rate = 13.5%, n = 101) are presented. Physicians and nurses reported similar high frequencies of ethical conflicts but rated the relevance of ethical (...) issues differently. Nurses stated ethical issues as less important to physicians than to themselves. Ethical conflicts were mostly discussed with staff from one’s own profession. Respondents predominantly expected the Clinical Ethics Committee to provide competent support. Mostly, nurses feared it might have no influence on clinical practice. Findings suggest that experiences of ethical conflicts might reflect interprofessional communication patterns. Expectations and objections against Clinical Ethics Committees were multifaceted, and should be overcome by providing sufficient information. The Clinical Ethics Committee needs to take different perspectives of professions into account. (shrink)

A single abstract from the DHd-2020 Book ofs.

A commonly held background assumption about the sciences is that they connect along borders characterized by ontological or explanatory relationships, usually given in the order of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and the social sciences. Interdisciplinary work, in this picture, arises in the connecting regions of adjacent disciplines. Philosophical research into interdisciplinary model transfer has increasingly complicated this picture by highlighting additional connections orthogonal to it. But most of these works have been done through case studies, which due to their (...) strong focus struggle to provide foundations for claims about large-scale relations between multiple scientific disciplines. As a supplement, in this contribution, we propose to philosophers of science the use of modern science mapping techniques to trace connections between modeling techniques in large literature samples. We explain in detail how these techniques work, and apply them to a large, contemporary, and multidisciplinary data set (n=383.961 articles). Through the comparison of textual to mathematical representations, we suggest formulaic structures that are particularly common among different disciplines and produce first results indicating the general strength and commonality of such relationships. (shrink)

In order to build on the information that was obtained in the course of the first study, a follow-up survey was conducted first by phone and subsequently in a written form between August and October 2014. We contacted 1.858 hospitals in all of Germany for the follow-up survey by phone. In cases where a hospital had not participated in the first study, the willingness to participate in the follow-up survey was established in advance. The survey’s dispatch was ensured in the (...) case of acceptance. The same structured survey was used as a research tool. The data of the first study and the follow-up survey were merged and evaluated. 654 surveys could be evaluated altogether. Our survey by phone revealed that 912 hospitals in all of Germany have at least one form of clinical ethics consultation available. The health care ethics committee is the most frequently implemented structure of clinical ethics consultation. The implementation of clinical ethics consultation is dependent on sponsorship and hospital size. Recommendations to deliver structures of clinical ethics consultations have a smaller influence on the implementation compared to the certification by KTQ respectively proCum Cert. The rate of implementation in regard to the structures of clinical ethics consultation has steadily increased for years. The establishment of clinical ethics consultation in German hospitals should be further promoted. It would be desirable further to develop suitable juridical regulations in order to implement clinical ethics consultation as well as structural parameters. (shrink)

There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsustainable growth and “hyper-competition.” Quantitative metrics in evaluating researchers are seen as replacing deeper considerations of the quality and novelty of work, as well as substantive care for the societal implications of research. Junior researchers are frequently mentioned as those most strongly affected by these dynamics. However, their own perceptions of these issues are much less frequently considered. This paper aims at contributing to a better (...) understanding of the interplay between how research is valued and how young researchers learn to live, work and produce knowledge within academia. We thus analyze how PhD students and postdocs in the Austrian life sciences ascribe worth to people, objects and practices as they talk about their own present and future lives in research. We draw on literature from the field of valuation studies and its interest in how actors refer to different forms of valuation to account for their actions. We explore how young researchers are socialized into different valuation practices in different stages of their growing into science. Introducing the concept of “regimes of valuation” we show that PhD students relate to a wider evaluative repertoire while postdocs base their decisions on one dominant regime of valuing research. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for the epistemic and social development of the life sciences, and for other scientific fields. (shrink)

The Sleeping Beauty transposon system is a nonviral DNA transfer tool capable of efficiently mediating transposition‐based, stable integration of DNA sequences of choice into eukaryotic genomes. Continuous refinements of the system, including the emergence of hyperactive transposase mutants and novel approaches in vectorology, greatly improve upon transposition efficiency rivaling viral‐vector‐based methods for stable gene insertion. Current developments, such as reversible transgenesis and proof‐of‐concept RNA‐guided transposition, further expand on possible applications in the future. In addition, innate advantages such as lack of (...) preferential integration into genes reduce insertional mutagenesis‐related safety concerns while comparably low manufacturing costs enable widespread implementation. Accordingly, the system is recognized as a powerful and versatile tool for genetic engineering and is playing a central role in an ever‐expanding number of gene and cell therapy clinical trials with the potential to become a key technology to meet the growing demand for advanced therapy medicinal products. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 28, Issue 1, pp 18 - 34 This article argues that the artificiality of Hobbesian states facilitates their coexistence and eventual reconciliation. In particular, it is suggested that international relations may be characterised by an artificial equality, which has a contrary effect to the natural equality of human beings. Unlike individuals in Hobbes’s account of the state of nature, sovereigns are not compelled to wage war out of fear and distrust, but have prudential reasons to exercise self-restraint. (...) Ultimately rulers serve as disposable figureheads who can be replaced by a foreign invader. Thus, this article highlights the implications of Hobbes’s views on sovereignty by acquisition, which allow for states to be decomposed and reassembled in order to re-establish lasting peace. It is concluded that these findings help to explain why Hobbes does not provide something akin to modern theories of international relations, as foreign affairs appear to be reducible to a matter of either prudence or political philosophy. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence increasingly executes tasks that previously only humans could do, such as drive a car, fight in war, or perform a medical operation. However, as the very best AI systems tend to be the least controllable and the least transparent, some scholars argued that humans can no longer be morally responsible for some of the AI-caused outcomes, which would then result in a responsibility gap. In this paper, I assume, for the sake of argument, that at least some of (...) the most sophisticated AI systems do indeed create responsibility gaps, and I ask whether we can bridge these gaps at will, viz. whether certain people could take responsibility for AI-caused harm simply by performing a certain speech act, just as people can give permission for something simply by performing the act of consent. So understood, taking responsibility would be a genuine normative power. I first discuss and reject the view of Champagne and Tonkens, who advocate a view of taking liability. According to this view, a military commander can and must, ahead of time, accept liability to blame and punishment for any harm caused by autonomous weapon systems under her command. I then defend my own proposal of taking answerability, viz. the view that people can makes themselves morally answerable for the harm caused by AI systems, not only ahead of time but also when harm has already been caused. (shrink)

In the absence of effective judicial remediation mechanisms after business-related human rights violations, companies themselves are expected to establish remediation procedures for affected victims and communities. This is a challenge for both companies and victims since comprehensive company-based grievance mechanisms are currently missing. In this paper, we explore how companies can provide effective remediation after human rights violations. Accordingly, we critically assess two different approaches to conflict resolution, alternative dispute resolution and restorative justice, for their potential to provide dialogue-based, non-judicial (...) remediation. We argue that remedy through agreement-driven ADR mechanisms risks marginalizing the interests and concerns of victims and affected community members, particularly in weak institutional contexts. Hence, we develop a dialogue-driven framework for corporate remediation of human rights violations grounded on RJ principles. This restorative framework provides a comprehensive CGM that focuses on the harms and needs of victims and aims at restoring justice through restorative dialogue. Based on a prompt discovery and a thorough investigation of the grievance, companies should design and prepare the remediation process together with victims, offenders and affected community members. Through restorative dialogue with the affected parties about the circumstances and impacts of the wrongdoing, companies can repair the harm, regain legitimacy amongst stakeholders as well as transform their business practices to avoid future human rights violations. (shrink)

In Being and Time Heidegger analyses the structure of Dasein, making transparent how and what we are in the world. Yet Heidegger’s writing becomes increasingly vague the closer he comes to describing what Dasein actually is. It seems the possibility of authentic Being grounds in the state-of-mind of anxiety, confronting us with a meaningless world and making Dasein transparent to itself. In three grammatically ambiguous sentences, Heidegger explains that we experience nothingness, yet not ‘total’ nothingness, in moments of anxiety. This (...) short passage seems of utmost importance to me. I argue that only in experiencing nothingness are we able to lead an authentic and self-owned life, independent of interpretations of others. From this insight I turn to Bernhard Waldenfels’ work Phenomenology of the Alien, my idea being that experiencing nothingness is an alien experience par excellence. Waldenfels analyses how we answer to alien experiences​, and what type of answers we can give. My thesis is that the possibility of authentic Being lies in an answer from nothingness, which does not just repeat what has already been said but must give new answers. (shrink)

Voluntariness is a necessary condition of valid consent. But determining whether a person consented voluntarily can be difficult, especially when people are subjected to coercion or manipulation, placed in a situation with no acceptable alternative other than to consent to something, or find themselves in an abusive relationship. This book presents a novel view on the voluntariness of consent, especially medical consent, which the author calls Interpersonal Consenter-Consentee Justification (ICCJ). According to this view, consent is voluntary if and only if (...) the process by which it has been obtained aligns with principles of interpersonal justification. ICCJ is distinctive because it explains voluntary consent neither as a 'psychological' concept indicative of the inner states of a person's mind (e.g. willingness or reluctance) nor as a 'circumstantial' concept indicative of a person's set of options. Rather, ICCJ explains the voluntariness of consent as an 'interpersonal' concept requiring the absence of illegitimate control within the interaction between the person giving consent and the person receiving it. In so doing, ICCJ further develops the notion of interpersonal justification, known from contractualist theories in moral philosophy, and introduces it to the debate on consent. The author employs a top-down approach, defending ICCJ's key characteristics on the basis of general theoretical arguments, as well as a bottom-up approach, supporting ICCJ in its application to clinical challenges such as nudging and manipulation, living organ donation, and clinical trials. Voluntary Consent will appeal to researchers and advanced students in normative ethics, bioethics, philosophy of law, behavioural psychology, and medicine. (shrink)

This essay sketches out the post-feminist narrative employed by the radical-right populist party Alternative für Deutschland in the German national parliament between October 2017 and July 2018. Striving to establish a hegemonic ontology, the Alternative für Deutschland conjures up a social imaginary of a German heartland, where equal rights between ‘naturally’ different women and men have long been achieved – a heartland that has to be protected from ‘Muslim culture’ as much as from the ‘leveling down’ imposed by a ‘radical (...) feminist elite’. Between these frames, the Alternative für Deutschland presents itself as the only true champion of women and, while never asserting to be feminist, implicitly lays claim to a particular and exclusivist post-feminist position. I argue that the Alternative für Deutschland’s capabilities to promote this populist narrative have become further enhanced by its election to the national parliament, presenting a serious challenge and also a chance for German feminism to self-critically engage with issues of intersectionality and representation in public discourse. (shrink)

The executive board of the Academy for Ethics in Medicine and two AEM working groups formulated standards and recommendations for clinical ethics consultation in 2010, 2011, and 2013. These guidelines comply with the international standards like those set by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. There is no empirical data available yet that could indicate whether these standards and recommendations have been implemented in German hospitals. This desideratum is addressed in the present study. We contacted 1.858 German hospitals between (...) September 2013 and January 2014. A follow-up survey was conducted between October 2014 and January 2015. The data of the initial survey and the follow-up survey were merged and evaluated. The statements of the participants were compared with the standards and recommendations. The standards of the AEM concerning the tasks of clinical ethics consultation are employed by a majority of participants of the study. Almost all of these participants document their consultation activities by means of protocols or entries in the patient file. There are deviations from the recommendations of the AEM working groups regarding the drafting of statutes, activity reports, and financial support. The activities of clinical ethics consultation predominantly comply with the standards of the AEM and recommendations for the documentation. The recommendations for evaluation should be improved in practice. This applies particularly for activity reports in order to evaluate the activities. Internal evaluation could take place accordingly. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 204 Seiten: 121-143.

We need not accommodate facts about meaning if Quine is right about the indeterminacy of subsentential expressions; there can be no such facts to accommodate. Evans argued that Quine’s approach overlooks the ways speakers use predication to endow their use of subsentential expressions with the necessary determinacy. This paper offers a critical assessment of the debate in relation to current arguments about naturalism and shows how Evans’s response depends on a basic claim that turns out to be false.

The proliferation of multistakeholder initiatives (MSIs) over the past years has sparked an intense debate on the political role of corporations in the governance of global business conduct. To gain a better understanding of corporate political behavior in multistakeholder governance, this article investigates how firms construct a political identity when participating in MSIs. Based on an in-depth case study of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh—an MSI established after the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory complex (...) in 2013 to improve working conditions in the Bangladeshi garment industry—we introduce the construct of a political CSR (corporate social responsibility) identity (PCSRI) and explore how firms construct their PCSRIs in MSIs. Employing a qualitative, inductive theory-building method, we analyze interviews and archival data to develop a framework that elucidates how companies construct their PCSRIs within a continuum ranging from conservative to progressive. We show that constructing a PCSRI involves enacting specific, yet interrelated, political strategies that are themselves shaped by several forces over time. This article contributes to the literature by providing a political perspective on organizational identity construction that extends the emerging integrative perspective in political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) research. We suggest that MSIs should be conceptualized as inherently political governance mechanisms that are driven by multidirectional and dynamic political processes of identity construction. Our study shows that corporate political engagement in MSIs is a more nuanced and complex phenomenon than presently theorized. (shrink)