University based academic Research Ethics Boards (REB) face the particularly difficult challenge of trying to achieve representation from a variety of disciplines, methodologies and research interests. Additionally, many are currently facing another decision – whether to have students as REB members or not. At Ryerson University, we are uniquely situated. Without a medical school in which an awareness of the research ethics review process might be grounded, our mainly social science and humanities REB must also educate and foster awareness of (...) the ethics review process throughout the academic community. Our Board has had and continues to have students as active members. While there are challenges to having students as Board members, these are clearly outweighed by the advantages, for both the academic community and the future of ethically sound research in the social sciences and humanities. Moreover, the challenges are often based on misconceptions and can be easily overcome through increased education and understanding of the research ethics review process by the academic community at large. The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the experiences, advantages and challenges of having students as REB members. The advantages of having students as REB members include the following: (1) Students are the proposed participants in many of our reviewed protocols and student members may illuminate unique issues of participation. (2) Students are active and highly engaged members of the REB. (3) Having students on the REB enhances awareness of research ethics within the University. (4) Student REB members have an opportunity to mentor other students and provide leadership for both undergraduate and graduate students. (5) Students are more vigorously recruited than faculty members and often apply for student positions with enthusiasm and preparation. (6) In creating an atmosphere of excellence in research, engaging students at the beginning of their research career will help in creating tomorrow’s leaders in research and research ethics. The challenges of having students as REB members include the following: (1) Faculty members may be uneasy regarding the prospect of students reviewing protocols. (2) Faculty members may be concerned about confidentiality and respect with students reviewing faculty research protocols. (3) There may be an increased burden for students who serve as members on an REB. (4) There is concern that students will offer less continuous service to the REB. (5) There is a common misconception that students do not have the experience to carry out ethical reviews. While there are challenges from faculty members and others regarding having students as REB members, these challenges are often based on misconceptions about the nature of the REB work and the ethics review process in general. These challenges are also often based on the misconception of the ethics review process as one of peer review and evaluation, instead of a community-based and inclusive process. Having student members is a long-term strategy for both overcoming the misconceptions of the REB as a “necessary evil” and for fostering an awareness of the imperative for ethically sound research in the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

Most donated organs in the United States come from brain dead donors, while a small percentage come from patients who die in “controlled,” or expected, circumstances, typically after the family or surrogate makes a decision to withdraw life support. The number of organs available for transplant could be substantially if donations were permitted in “uncontrolled” circumstances–that is, from people who die unexpectedly, often outside the hospital. According to projections from the Institute of Medicine, establishing programs permitting “uncontrolled donation after circulatory (...) determination of death,” or uDCDD, throughout the United States has the potential to provide 22,000 more donation opportunities annually. In contrast, U.S. controlled donation after circulatory determination of death, or cDCDD, cases have increased progressively over the past decade from 87 to 848 donors, but currently account for only 10.6 percent of all deceased donors. Following the IOM recommendations, several projects exploring the feasibility of uDCDD were funded by the federal government, including a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration that supported a pilot project in New York City in which the authors of this article participated.A key feature of our protocol, and indeed of many uDCDD protocols, is the initiation of preservation methods such as chest compressions and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation shortly after death in order to perfuse and preserve the donor's organs. Critics of uDCDD argue that the means of determining death deviates from generally ascribed principles. They assert that reinstituting circulation in order to preserve organs has the effect of “undoing” the prior determination of death. The result is that cDCDD is widely accepted and practiced routinely even though it only marginally increases the number of organs available for transplantation, and uDCDD is widely considered unacceptable despite being ethically embraced and proven to significantly increase organ donation opportunities in other countries. This article explores the evolution of this counterintuitive state of affairs and calls for a policy that, in line with the IOM report, allows for both cDCDD and uDCDD protocols. (shrink)

In this article, using the recent work by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age as my point of departure, I will argue that Jean-Luc Nancy enables us to think past the competing binary of atheistic and religious experience and allows us to surpass the present narratives of secularism. In A Secular Age, Taylor himself seeks a middle ground between atheism and religion, arguing that it is possible to open ourselves to the cross-pressures of modern existence that find us caught (...) between scientific atheism and a need for spiritual and religious guidance. Here, Taylor finds a way of picturing ourselves within a secular age, remaining faithful to scientific rationalism, but still open to religion and a sense of a higher good. However, as I shall demonstrate, in his thesis Taylor misrepresents the Continental philosophical tradition (particularly Nietzsche and post-structuralism) that has itself sought to understand these cross-pressures of existence. Taking this misrepresentation, and specifically his reductive and colloquial analysis of Nietzsche, Camus, and Derrida, as my point of departure, I provide an alternative manner of thinking through the work of these writers, one that leads to a detailed analysis of Jean-Luc Nancy and his project the deconstruction of Christianity. In this analysis I argue that Nancy provides a manner of thinking that remains open and allows an experience of freedom, without seeking to close that sense of openness with explanation, nor maintaining that sense of openness with a conception of the divine. (shrink)

We provide an overview of a transdisciplinary project about sustainable forest management under climate change. Our project is a partnership with members of the Menominee Nation, a Tribal Nation located in northern Wisconsin, United States. We use immersive virtual experiences, translated from ecosystem model outcomes, to elicit human values about future forest conditions under alternative scenarios. Our project combines expertise across the sciences and humanities as well as across cultures and knowledge systems. Our management structure, governance, and leadership behaviors have (...) both fostered and constrained our work and must be continuously responsive to changing group dynamics. Our project presents opportunities for substantial contributions to society, including insights and knowledge about complementary ways of knowing, skills training, and professional development, and opportunities for reflexive learning about effective transdisciplinary, translational, and transformative scientific processes. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy is a contemporary continental philosopher who argues that the hope of fully unifying a community through work is problematic. This is because people cannot be reduced to their function as workers. Thus, community is, at best, inoperative. This article takes Nancy’s ideas of community and applies them to the notion of teamwork in business. It shows how in some literature on business teamwork, there is a desire to build a team through shared work experiences. It then (...) explains Nancy’s view as to why this cannot work, and it enters into Nancy’s positive account of how a community should be seen as a web of people communicating and sharing with each other in a variety of ways. The practical conclusion the study draws is that team members need to be careful about allowing goal orientation to obfuscate the richness of the relationships that occur among team members. People need to explore all of the ways in which people share with each other rather than just those ways that advance a narrow set of goals. If the richness of those relationships is recognized, many new directions for business and for general human development may appear. (shrink)

A certain order or stability of nature has often been seen as a necessary presupposition of many of our scientific practices, in particular of our use of information gained in one kind of circumstance to explain or predict what happens in quite different situations. John Maynard Keynes and, more recently, Nancy Cartwright have argued that these practices commit us to the existence of stable ‘atoms’ or ‘natures’ or ‘tendencies.’ The phenomena we observe in nature are, on this view, the (...) result of superimposing the invariable, context-independent effects of all the different tendencies involved. (shrink)

Shannon Sullivan has criticized Richard Rorty for the discrepancy in his treatments of Cornel West and Marilyn Frye's prophetic philosophies, which Sullivan reads to indicate a racial bias on Rorty's part. This article defends Rorty from this criticism, first clarifying his view of the discontinuous relation of philosophy to politics, then, on the basis of this clarification, arguing that Rorty's different treatments of West and Frye do not reveal a racial bias as Sullivan claims. Finally, revisiting Rorty's exchange with (...) class='Hi'>Nancy Fraser, it is argued that although Rorty has no philosophy of race, he does offer a strong antiracist politics. (shrink)

Arguing About Science is an outstanding, engaging introduction to the essential topics in philosophy of science, edited by two leading experts in the field. This exciting and innovative anthology contains a selection of classic and contemporary readings that examine a broad range of issues, from classic problems such as scientific reasoning; causation; and scientific realism, to more recent topics such as science and race; forensic science; and the scientific status of medicine. The editors bring together some of the most influential (...) contributions of famous philosophers in the field, including John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper, as well as more recent extracts from philosophers and scientists such as Ian Hacking, Stephen Jay Gould, Bas van Fraassen, Nancy Cartwright, and John Worrall. The anthology is organised into nine clear sections: science, non science and pseudo-science race, gender and science scientific reasoning scientific explanation laws and causation science and medicine probability and forensic science risk, uncertainty and science policy scientific realism and anti-realism. The articles chosen are clear, interesting, and free from unnecessary jargon. The editors provide lucid introductions to each section in which they provide an overview of the debate, as well as suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

The Human Agenda is the first Special Edition of The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art (CJLPA), an interdisciplinary journal founded at the University of Cambridge. Focused on the unique intersections of law, politics and art in the context of human rights, contributors to the Special Edition include David Baragwanath, Luis Moreno Ocampo, Nadia Murad, Nancy Hollander, Andrew Clapham, Vladimir Osechkin, Mansour al-Omari, and many others. A full table of contents is available through the publication's own page.

Nancy Jecker’s essay Nothing to be Ashamed of: Sex Robots for Older Adults with Disabilities 1 presents a provocative application of the capabilities approach. Her ethical argument for providing access to sex robots for older adults with disabilities proceeds in five parts: 1. Older adults frequently suffer disabilities that impair sexual functioning. 2. The ability to function sexually is linked to central human capabilities, including: the ability to generate a personally meaningful life narrative; be physically, mentally and emotionally healthy; (...) experience bodily integrity; feel and express a range of human emotions; affiliate deeply with others; and reflect on and choose a plan for their life. 3. Society should take reasonable steps to support these human capabilities at a minimal threshold as part of a broader duty to respect human dignity. 4. Providing access to sex robots comprises part of reasonable efforts to support the six capabilities at a minimal threshold. 5. Therefore, society ought to make reasonable efforts to ensure access to sex robots for older adults with disabilities that impair sexual functioning. I am sympathetic to this line of reasoning, having proposed a series of legal reforms that would facilitate sexual expression among older adults with cognitive impairments as well.2 3 …. (shrink)

This paper critically analyses the concept of evidence in evidence-based-policy arguing that there is key problem: that there is no existing practicable theory of evidence, one which is philosophically grounded and yet applicable for evidencebased policy. The paper critically considers both philosophical accounts of evidence and practical treatments of evidence in evidence-based-policy. It argues that both fail in different ways to provide a theory of evidence that is adequate for evidence-basedpolicy. The paper is a valuable contribution to the part of (...) the research project that explores how evidence can and should be used to reduce contingency in science, and policy based on science. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 128-132.

Under patriarchy, the rationally autonomous agent engages in contractual relations in a marketplace society. The contractual model reinforces a negative conception of the vulnerable as weak and as susceptible to injury and exploitation. Recent feminist writing has a positive notion of vulnerability that is in conflict with contractualism. Positive notions of vulnerability, the paper argues, are found in Virginia Held’s conception of mothering, Nel Noddings’ analysis of teaching, and Annette Baier’s development of trust as essential for social relationships.

Simone de Beauvoir’s _The Second Sex_ is the most important work of feminist philosophy ever published and one of the great texts of the Twentieth century. Renowned for introducing the theory of woman as the ‘Other’ it is a widely-studied text that continues to exert profound influence on feminist thought. _The Routledge Guidebook to De Beauvoir and The Second Sex_ introduces and assesses: De Beauvoir’s life and the background of The Second Sex The ideas and arguments of The Second Sex (...) De Beauvoir’s continuing importance to feminist theory and philosophy This book is essential reading for all students of feminism, gender studies, philosophy, and literary studies and ideal for anyone reading de Beauvoir’s classic work for the first time. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 22, Issue 3, Page 152-161, September 2022.

Die Metaphysik ist seit dem 21. Jahrhundert erneut in den Fokus der Aufmerksamkeit geruckt. Alexander Schnell entwickelt eine Position, die sich von neueren "realistischen" Ansatzen unterscheidet. In den systematischen Ausarbeitungen der klassischen deutschen Philosophie verstanden sich die Deutschen Idealisten zugleich als die grossten Realisten. In der aktuellen Diskussion hingegen scheint jeder idealistische Standpunkt kompromittiert zu sein, da er auf einem uberholten Subjektivismus beruhe. Der hier verteidigte transzendentale Idealismus verfolgt eine Perspektive, in der die Frage nach dem "Sein" diesseits der (...) hypostasierten Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung gestellt wird. Diese Abhandlung uber die phanomenologische Metaphysik fugt sich somit in eine zeitgenossische Debatte ein, die sowohl philosophische (insbesondere dank des "neuen Realismus") als auch anthropologische (in Bezug auf den Status des "Relationismus") Relevanz hat. (shrink)

In welcher Hinsicht können körperlich-leibliche Erfahrungen als Teil sozialer Aktivitäten verstanden werden und wie kann man sie sozialwissenschaftlich untersuchen? Unter Rückgriff auf den klassischen Pragmatismus, insbesondere John Dewey, und soziologische Praxistheorien leistet Alexander Antony einen Beitrag zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen. Er entwickelt eine Soziologie leiblicher Praxis, welche Sozialtheorie, methodologische Reflexion und die Erforschung der Produktion ge- und erlebter Körperlichkeit miteinander verschränkt. Empirisch widmet sich das Buch aus einer diskursanalytischen und ethnographischen Perspektive der Praktik der Atemarbeit, einem,,ganzheitlichen" Therapie- und Selbsterfahrungsangebot. (...) Die Atemarbeit zielt darauf, eine bewusst erlebte leibliche Selbstbezüglichkeit zu etablieren, um derart körperliches, psychisches und seelisch-spirituelles Wohlbefinden zu befördern. Auf unterschiedlichen Analyseebenen spürt der Autor der Frage nach, wie individuelles leibliches Erleben und die diskursive und soziomaterielle Produktion von Erfahrungssituationen zusammenspielen. Die zentrale Einsicht: Sozialität geht buchstäblich unter die Haut. Der Autor Alexander Antony ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Soziologie der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. (shrink)

Using longitudinal, ethnographic data, the authors examine how the pursuit of self-sufficiency in the context of welfare reform may unintentionally encourage some women to develop alternative dangerous dependencies on abusive or potentially abusive men. In this article, the authors document how women ended up relying on men who have been abusive to them either for instrumental assistance or for more direct financial assistance as they struggled to move from welfare to work. The authors also document how some extremely disadvantaged and (...) vulnerable women became enmeshed in even more dangerous dependencies as they hit time limits and fell through public and private safety nets into drug addiction and sex work. The authors frame this discussion of dangerous dependencies with the recognition that dependency relations are necessary and inevitable components of carework. They argue that the discourse of self-sufficiency should acknowledge the fact that careworkers are productive citizens to the same extent as paid laborers and grapple with the question of the means through which they can support that productivity when personal resources are limited and paid labor is temporarily or permanently impossible. (shrink)

What does the word “value” mean? On the one hand, absolute value is an excellence that is beyond measure. On the other hand, value can also be interpreted as price, as what can be measured and exchanged. In both cases, value lies in relation and is of the same order as sense. But what is the relation between these two senses of value? And why is it so difficult to hold the two apart?

trans. R. W. Sharples. Alexander addresses a number of questions drawn from a range of topics in Aristotle's works.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Necessity and Essence Naming and Reference Rules and Meaning Conclusion References.

Can we have a posteriori knowledge of modal facts? And if so, is that knowledge fundamentally a posteriori, or does a priori intuition provide the modal component of what is known? Though the latter view seems more straightforward, there are also reasons for taking the first option seriously.

Metaphors involve immense explanatory power and positive impact predominantly in the scientific education and popularization. Still the use of metaphors in science might be a double-edged sword. Introduction of the computer metaphor to many scientific fields in the last century resulted in reductionist approaches, oversimplifications and mechanistic explanations in science as well as in humanities. In this short commentary we developed further the computer metaphor by prof. Noble and the illusions this metaphor led to in genetics, linguistics and consequently DNA (...) linguistics. (shrink)