Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 215 Seiten: 73-90.

Clinicians have good moral and professional reasons to contribute to pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs). We argue that clinicians have a defeasible duty to participate in this research that takes place in usual care settings and does not involve substantive deviation from their ordinary care practices. However, a variety of countervailing reasons may excuse clinicians from this duty in particular cases. Yet because there is a moral default in favor of participating, clinicians who wish to opt out of this research must (...) justify their refusal. Reasons to refuse include that the trial is badly designed in some way, that the trial activities will violate the clinician’s conscience, or that the trial will impose excessive burdens on the clinician. (shrink)

Recent research has provided converging evidence, using multiple tasks, of sensitivity to fairness in the second year of life. In contrast, findings in the first year have been mixed, leaving it unclear whether young infants possess an expectation of fairness. The present research examined the possibility that young infants might expect windfall resources to be divided equally between similar recipients, but might demonstrate this expectation only under very simple conditions. In three violation-of-expectation experiments, 9-month-olds (N = 120) expected an experimenter (...) to divide two cookies equally between two animated puppets (1:1), and they detected a violation when she divided them unfairly instead (2:0). The same positive result was obtained whether the experimenter gave the cookies one by one to the puppets (Experiments 1–2) or first separated them onto placemats and then gave each puppet a placemat (Experiment 3). However, a negative result was obtained when four (as opposed to two) cookies were allocated: Infants looked about equally whether they saw a fair (2:2) or an unfair (3:1) distribution (Experiment 3). A final experiment revealed that 4-month-olds (N = 40) also expected an experimenter to distribute two cookies equally between two animated puppets (Experiment 4). Together, these and various control results support two broad conclusions. First, sensitivity to fairness emerges very early in life, consistent with claims that an abstract expectation of fairness is part of the basic structure of human moral cognition. Second, this expectation can at first be observed only under simple conditions, and speculations are offered as to why this might be the case. (shrink)

The building of a global model of carcinogenesis is one of modern biology’s greatest challenges. The traditional somatic mutation theory is now supplemented by a new approach, called the Tissue Organization Field Theory. According to TOFT, the original source of cancer is loss of tissue organization rather than genetic mutations. In this paper, we study the argumentative strategy used by the advocates of TOFT to impose their view. In particular, we criticize their claim of incompatibility used to justify the necessity (...) to definitively reject SMT. First, we note that since it is difficult to build a non-ambiguous experimental demonstration of the superiority of TOFT, its partisans add epistemological and metaphysical arguments to the debate. This argumentative strategy allows them to defend the necessity of a paradigm shift, with TOFT superseding SMT. To do so, they introduce a notion of incompatibility, which they actually use as the Kuhnian notion of incommensurability. To justify this so-called incompatibility between the two theories of cancer, they move the debate to a metaphysical ground by assimilating the controversy to a fundamental opposition between reductionism and organicism. We show here that this argumentative strategy is specious, because it does not demonstrate clearly that TOFT is an organicist theory. Since it shares with SMT its vocabulary, its ontology and its methodology, it appears that a claim of incompatibility based on this metaphysical plan is not fully justified in the present state of the debate. We conclude that it is more cogent to argue that the two theories are compatible, both biologically and metaphysically. We propose to consider that TOFT and SMT describe two distinct and compatible causal pathways to carcinogenesis. This view is coherent with the existence of integrative approaches, and suggests that they have a higher epistemic value than the two theories taken separately. (shrink)

This Element introduces the philosophical literature on models, with an emphasis on normative considerations relevant to models for decision-making. Chapter 1 gives an overview of core questions in the philosophy of modeling. Chapter 2 examines the concept of model adequacy for purpose, using three examples of models from the atmospheric sciences to describe how this sort of adequacy is determined in practice. Chapter 3 explores the significance of using models that are not adequate for purpose, including the purpose of informing (...) public decisions. Chapter 4 provides a basic framework for values in modelling, using a case study to highlight the ethical challenges in building models for decision making. It concludes by establishing the need for strategies to manage value judgments in modelling, including the potential for public participation in the process. (shrink)

There are some cases where it appears permissible to perform a rescue at someone’s expense, and other cases where it appears impermissible to do so. Existing explanations for our asymmetric moral judgments about such cases either fail to provide intuitive moral verdicts or lack a satisfying rationale. In this article, I propose a new explanation of what is morally problematic about certain rescues that is subject to neither issue. My proposal is a version of the means principle which adds the (...) essential caveat that there is no moral presumption against using someone as a means to benefit herself. By attributing moral significance to the victim’s relationship to the beneficiary rather than the agent alone, my solution points to a new underlying rationale for the means principle as well as extensional and explanatory inadequacies in competing theories. (shrink)

The online version of the original article can be found under doi:10.1007/s11948-000-0001-7.

This paper explores the gendered discourses of the – seemingly favourable – media coverage that certain Heads of State received for their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking at media reports published in different English-speaking outlets in the US, the UK, India, Bangladesh, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland, and using multimodal feminist critical discourse analysis, we identify and describe strategies that on the surface appear to challenge hegemonic – and largely masculine – discourses of leadership. Upon closer scrutiny, these (...) superficially complimentary reports rather reinforce and naturalise discriminatory gender ideologies, and, as we demonstrate, they do so to different degrees along a continuum of essentialising, contextualising, and problematising. We critically discuss the discursive and visual processes involved and show that complimenting these leaders on their performance compares them against a masculine norm to construct their leadership as ‘alternative’, exceptional, and hence marked. This gendered portrayal of political leadership in times of crisis illustrates how the discursive construction of identities, responsibilities, and relationships during COVID-19 largely hinges on power relations and political ideologies that systematically disadvantage and undermine women. The purportedly positive form in which this occurs makes it particularly difficult to challenge and subvert these discriminatory discourses and their underlying gendered ideologies. (shrink)

La COVID-19 generó grandes estragos en materia de economía ocasionando que, desde el inicio de la pandemia, los microempresarios sortearan grandes desafíos. Así las cosas, el presente articulo busca reflexionar sobre las dimensiones gerenciales aplicables por los microempresarios de la ciudad de montería durante la Covid 19, a través de una investigación con enfoque mixto de carácter exploratorio, en donde se aplicó como instrumento una entrevista semiestructurada donde se ahondó la problemática con los empresarios, arrojando como resultado las habilidades que (...) consideran esenciales para este tipo de desafíos, partiendo del efecto que tuvo la Covid 19 en sus empresas. (shrink)

Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory explores the place of Africa in archaeological theory, and the place of theory in African archaeology. The centrality of African models in reconstructions is explored, focusing on materiality and agency in the past. The differences between how African models are used in western theoretical discourse and the use of that theory within Africa are also highlighted, as a means to explore the nature of theory itself. Thus, this dual purposed volume is a timely intervention (...) into archaeological theory, deconstructing the taken-for-granted foundations of the ways we approach the past. (shrink)

Studies of corporate social performance (CSP) research indicate the critical importance of research design and methodology in developing and testing CSP theories. In this paper we analyze data from a study of environmental performance in the U.S. wine industry to demonstrate how the research methodologies can cause researchers to reach different theoretical conclusions from the same data. We conclude that structural equation modeling (SEM) offers CSP researchers valuable tools that can accommodate critical theory development needs.

In this chapter we look at selfhood in contemporary Confucianism and feminism. We will argue that contemporary Confucians and feminists (and, with some caveats, Confucius and Mencius) have three important points in common when considering the self. In our argument, we will reflect on the debate about Chengyang Li's suggestion that there are important similarities between 仁 (ren ), a term that means roughly "humanity;' "human kindness,'' or "humanity at its best;' and the care ethics advocated by feminists Carol Gilligan, (...) Nel Noddings, and others. Our goal here is not to settle the debates between and among differing Confucians and feminists. Instead, we want to argue that the differences among the views of particular contemporary Confucians and feminists in understanding selfhood and relationality may in fact be smaller than the differences between the two looked at categorically. (shrink)

People often think about how things could have been better or worse. People make these upward and downward comparisons in different situations and with differing emotional consequences. We investigated whether the direction of counterfactual comparisons affects people’s judgements of counterfactual closeness. In four preregistered experiments (N = 2,142), participants saw vignettes where agents lost or won a luck-based game. In Experiments 1, 2, and 4, participants judged counterfactual closeness in two ways: if a counterfactual outcome almost happened, and if it (...) easily could have happened. These judgments were affected by different factors, but did not substantially differ based on the direction of comparison. In Experiments 3 and 4, participants predicted agents’ emotions – whether losers would be sad, winners would be happy, and whether both would be surprised by the outcome. Emotion predictions showed similar patterns regardless of whether agents lost or won. Participants predicted stronger emotional reactions when the prior probability of the counterfactual outcome was high rather than low, though this effect was somewhat stronger when agents lost. Together, these findings join recent work in suggesting that Almost and Easily judgments tap into distinct forms of counterfactual closeness, and also suggest this distinction is robust to the direction of counterfactual reasoning. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 5-8.

This article draws on the conceptualisation of ‘discursive formation’ to examine the particular configuration of the ‘objects, subjects, concepts and strategies’ which constituted ‘nuclear proliferation’ between 2006 and 2012. While previous studies have mostly explored the discourse of nuclear proliferation through the analysis of newspaper texts, few have considered corpora from different sites or considered the changes, transformations and contradictions that take place when meanings are delocated from one site and relocated in another. Elements of poststructuralist discourse theory, critical linguistics (...) and corpus linguistics are brought together to consider how events were constructed within two corpora: UN Security Council resolutions and newspaper articles published in prominent UK and US broadsheets. WordSmith Tools was used to analyse word frequencies, statistical patterns of keywords, word collocation profiles and concordance patterns. Results indicate that the most salient lexical items refer to actors, strategic actions and technologies. As these constituents of nuclear proliferation are delocated from the political sphere and relocated in the public sphere, three discursive strategies unfold: personalisation, normalisation or exceptionalisation, and reification. (shrink)

The legitimacy of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) as institutions for social and environmental governance in the global economy has received much scholarly attention over the past years. To date, however, research has yet to focus on assessing the legitimacy of MSIs in their interactions with other actors within larger systems of deliberation. Drawing on the deliberative systems perspective developed within deliberative democracy theory, we theorise a normative framework to evaluate the roles of MSIs within the broader systems of governance they co-construct (...) through their interactions with other initiatives, governments, non-governmental organisations, and other external actors. As we demonstrate in our evaluation of the illustrative case of the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety as a MSI in the context of the Bangladeshi garment industry, this framework can help researchers assess whether a MSI ultimately serves to enhance or undermine the deliberative legitimacy of the overall system of which it forms a part. (shrink)

We applaud Domjan et al. for providing an elegant account of Pavlovian feed-forward mechanisms in social behavior that eschews the pitfall of purposivism. However, they seem to imply that they have provided a complete account without provision for operant conditioning. We argue that operant conditioning plays a central role in social behavior, giving examples from fish and infant behavior.

We consider four mechanisms by which apparent discontinuities in the distribution of antisociality could arise: (1) executive genes or hormonal systems, (2) multiplicative interactions of predisposing factors, (3) environmental tracking into a limited number of social roles, and (4) cross-generational gene—environment interactions. A more explicit consideration of complex self-organizing dynamic systems may help us understand the maintenance of antisocial subpopulations.

There are good reasons why social psychologists have emphasized the negative side of human reasoning. They are simply following humans' tendency to pay particular attention to unusual occurrences. Attempts to refocus attention onto a wider range of behavior should include the influence of learning on both normative and non-normative behavior.

Far from an elite practice reserved for the highly educated, criticism is all around us. We turn to the Yelp reviewers to decide what restaurants are best, to Rotten Tomatoes to guide our movie choices, and to a host of voices on social media for critiques of political candidates, beach resorts, and everything in between. Yet even amid this ever-expanding sea of opinions, professional critics still hold considerable power in guiding how we make aesthetic judgements. Philosophers and lovers of art (...) continue to grapple with questions that have fascinated them for centuries: How should we engage with works of art? What might enhance such encounters? Should some people’s views be privileged? Who should count as a critic? And do critics actually help us appreciate art? In Two Thumbs Up, philosopher Stephanie Ross tackles these questions, revealing the ways that critics influence our decisions, and why that’s a good thing. Starting from David Hume’s conception of ideal critics, Ross refines his position and makes the case that review-based journalistic or consumer reporting criticism proves the best model for helping us find and appreciate quality. She addresses and critiques several other positions and, in the process, she demonstrates how aesthetic and philosophical concerns permeate our lives, choices, and culture. Ultimately, whether we’re searching for the right wine or the best concert, Ross encourages us all to find and follow critics whose taste we share. (shrink)

Growing interest in embedded research approaches—where research is incorporated into clinical care—has spurred numerous studies to generate knowledge relevant to the real-world needs of patients and other stakeholders. However, it also has presented ethical challenges. An emerging challenge is how to understand the nature and extent of investigators’ obligations to patient-subjects. Prior scholarship on investigator duties has generally been grounded upon the premise that research and clinical care are distinct activities, bearing distinct duties. Yet this premise—and its corresponding implications—are challenged (...) when research and clinical care are deliberately integrated. After presenting three case studies from recent pragmatic clinical trials, we identify six differences between explanatory trials and embedded research that limit the application of existing scholarship for ascertaining investigator duties. We suggest that these limitations indicate a need to account for the implications of usual care and to move beyond a narrow focus on the investigator-subject dyad, one that better reflects the team- and institution-based nature of contemporary health systems. (shrink)

Accommodating the diversity of learners in mainstream schooling and providing high quality education to all - what is usually described as inclusive education - is prioritised at international and European levels as a human rights issue and as a reform strategy which tackles inequalities and promotes social cohesion within both schools and wider society. This book advances critical realist ideas in empirical research in order to close the theory-practice gap and shift the emphasis from epistemology to ontology with regard to (...) teachers' empowerment to provide inclusive education. With a focus on the school context rather than the agency of the individual teacher, the authors use empirical data from case studies to demonstrate teachers' disempowerment as real, and rooted in features of reality. Offering a unified critical realist model, the book challenges taken-for-granted ideas and practices concerning the empowerment of teachers in inclusive education and seeks to set the ground for a more holistic and inclusive educational change. and inclusive educational change. (shrink)

Collectively these essays inform educators and researchers at different grade levels about the teaching and learning of proof at each level and, thus, help ...