»Civil society« with its main elements of »social democratic citizenship« and subsidiarity is an analytical approach to the present situation of democracys and offers an perspective to surrender the democratic deficit and the crisis of the welfare state in the Member states of the European Union. The concept of »Civil society« bases on an active citizenship and give intermediary civil actors, especially the charitable social welfare associations and democratic movements, the chance to reflect on their position to the govemment on (...) the one side and to the citizen on the other side in order to take account of the citizen' s civil, political and social rights. (shrink)

Rasmussen (1993) argues that, because electron microscopists did not use robustness and would not have been warranted in using it as a criterion for the reality or the artifactuality of mesosomes, the bacterial mesosome serves as a test case for robustness that it fails. I respond by arguing that a more complete reading of the research literature on the mesosome shows that ultimately the more robust body of data did not support the mesosome and that electron microscopists used and were (...) warranted in using robustness as a criterion for the artifactuality of mesosomes. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to theory structure and theory change in science do not fare well when confronted with the practice of certain fields of science. We offer an account of contemporary practice in molecular biology designed to address two questions: Is theory change in this area of science gradual or saltatory? What is the relation between molecular biology and the fields of traditional biology? Our main focus is a recent episode in molecular biology, the discovery of enzymatic RNA. We argue that (...) our reconstruction of this episode shows that traditional approaches to theory structure and theory change need considerable refinement if they are to be defended as generally applicable. 1This paper emerged from discussions between us, and we are both equally responsible for its errors. We would like to thank Yvonne Paterson for helpful comments. (shrink)

Sylvia Berryman offers a fresh understanding of Aristotle's ethical theory, challenging the common belief that he aimed to give it a biological foundation in human nature. Berryman reinterprets Aristotle's views as a 'middle way' between the metaphysical grounding offered by Platonists and sceptical or subjectivist alternatives.

This paper attempts to outline an autonomous feminism; a feminism with its own voice, and one that will transcend the binaries in which Marxism and liberalism are still caught. Its first step is to make clear the semio-linguistic foundations of all human social systems. These foundations consist of an open-ended set of social imaginary signifiers embedded in complex abduction or analogy-producing schemas, the creative conjugating of which makes possible the establishing of social orders such as families, monarchies or patriarchies. The (...) second is to show that the semiotics of these orders require dominant or central signifiers, such as father or king, that must be supported by subordinate or peripheral ones. Third, the paper shows that women have consistently functioned as subordinate signifiers in these order-producing semio-linguistic codes. Fourth and finally, the paper details the semiotic difficulties of overthrowing this underlying governing code and thus breaking women out of their assigned subordinate positions. (shrink)

Noradrenergic pathways are involved in mediating the central and peripheral effects of physiological arousal. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of noradrenergic transmission in moral decision-making. We studied the effects in healthy volunteers of propranolol (a noradrenergic beta-adrenoceptor antagonist) on moral judgement in a set of moral dilemmas pitting utilitarian outcomes (e.g., saving five lives) against highly aversive harmful actions (e.g., killing an innocent person) in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel group design. Propranolol (40 mg orally) (...) significantly reduced heart rate, but had no effect on self-reported mood. Importantly, propranolol made participants more likely to judge harmful actions as morally unacceptable, but only in dilemmas where harms were ‘up close and personal’. In addition, longer response times for such personal dilemmas were only found for the placebo group. Finally, judgments in personal dilemmas by the propranolol group were more decisive. These findings indicate that noradrenergic pathways play a role in responses to moral dilemmas, in line with recent work implicating emotion in moral decision-making. However, contrary to current theorising, these findings also suggest that aversion to harming is not driven by emotional arousal. Our findings are also of significant practical interest given that propranolol is a widely used drug in different settings, and is currently being considered as a potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder in military and rescue service personnel. (shrink)

_Living Poetically_ is the first book to focus primarily on Kierkegaard's existential aesthetics as opposed to traditional aesthetic features of his writings such as the use of pseudonyms, literary techniques and figures, and literary criticism. _Living Poetically_ traces the development of the concept of the poetic in Kierkegaard's writings as that concept is worked out in an ethical-religious perspective in contrast to the aesthetics of early German romanticism and Hegelian idealism. Sylvia Walsh seeks to elucidate what it means, in (...) Kierkegaard's view, to be an authentic poet in the form of a poetic writer and to clarify his own role as a Christian poet and writer as he understood it. Walsh shows that, in spite of strong criticisms made of the poetic in some of his writings, Kierkegaard maintained a fundamentally positive understanding of the poetic as an essential ingredient in ethical and religious forms of life. Walsh thus reclaims Kierkegaard as a poetic thinker and writer from those who would interpret him as an ironic practitioner of an aestheticism devoid of and detached from the ethical-religious as well as from those who view him as rejecting the poetic and aesthetic on ethical or religious grounds. Viewing contemporary postmodern feminism and deconstruction as advocating a romantic mode of living poetically, Walsh concludes with a feminist reading of Kierkegaard that affirms both individuality and relatedness, commonalities and differences between the self and others, men and women, for the fashioning of an authentic mode of living poetically in the present age. (shrink)

I respond to H. M. Collins's claim (1985, 1990, 1993) that experimental inquiry cannot be objective because the only criterium experimentalists have for determining whether a technique is "working" is the production of "correct" (i.e., the expected) data. Collins claims that the "experimenters' regress," the name he gives to this data-technique circle, cannot be broken using the resources of experiment alone. I argue that the data-technique circle, can be broken even though any interpretation of the raw data produced by techniques (...) is theory-dependent. However, it is possible to break this circle by eliminating dependence on even those theoretical presuppositions that are shared by an entire scientific community through the use of multiple independently theory-dependent techniques to produce robust bodies of data. Moreover, I argue, that it is the production of robust bodies of data that convinces experimentalists of the objectivity of their data interpretations. (shrink)

It has long been thought that the ancient Greeks did not take mechanics seriously as part of the workings of nature, and that therefore their natural philosophy was both primitive and marginal. In this book Sylvia Berryman challenges that assumption, arguing that the idea that the world works 'like a machine' can be found in ancient Greek thought, predating the early modern philosophy with which it is most closely associated. Her discussion ranges over topics including balancing and equilibrium, lifting (...) water, sphere-making and models of the heavens, and ancient Greek pneumatic theory, with detailed analysis of thinkers such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Hero of Alexandria. Her book shows scholars of ancient Greek philosophy why it is necessary to pay attention to mechanics, and shows historians of science why the differences between ancient and modern reactions to mechanics are not as great as was generally thought. (shrink)

This article contributes to the revision of the concept of system in social theory using complexity theory. The old concept of social system is widely discredited; a new concept of social system can more adequately constitute an explanatory framework. Complexity theory offers the toolkit needed for this paradigm shift in social theory. The route taken is not via Luhmann, but rather the insights of complexity theorists in the sciences are applied to the tradition of social theory inspired by Marx, Weber, (...) and Simmel. The article contributes to the theorization of intersectionality in social theory as well as to the philosophy of social science. It addresses the challenge of theorizing the intersection of multiple complex social inequalities, exploring the various alternative approaches, before rethinking the concept of social system. It investigates and applies, for the first time, the implications of complexity theory for the analysis of multiple intersecting social inequalities. Key Words: complexity theory • inequality • intersectionality • social theory. (shrink)

To analyse contingent propositions, this paper investigates how branching time structures can be combined with probability theory. In particular, it considers assigning infinitesimal probabilities—available in non-Archimedean probability theory—to individual histories. This allows us to introduce the concept of ‘remote possibility’ as a new modal notion between ‘impossibility’ and ‘appreciable possibility’. The proposal is illustrated by applying it to a future contingent and a historical counterfactual concerning an infinite sequence of coin tosses. The latter is a toy model that is used (...) to illustrate the applicability of the proposal to more realistic physical models. (shrink)

This paper emanates from the concept of empathy as understood by the German philosopher Edith Stein. It begins by highlighting different interpretations of empathy. According to the German philosopher Martin Buber, empathy cannot be achieved as an act of will. In contrast, the psychologist Carl Rogers believes that empathy is identical with dialogue and is the outcome of a cognitive act of active listening. The empathy concept of Edith Stein, philosopher and follower of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, goes beyond these conflicting (...) views and offers a more complex interpretation, with relevance for both healthcare and nursing education. When studying Stein's three‐level model of empathy, a field of tension between perspectives of closeness and distance becomes apparent. The paper concludes by suggesting Stein's model of empathy as a strategy to overcome the tension and meet the demands of empathy. (shrink)

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

Examines how the courts have helped to shape the issue of animal welfare.

Several developments in the measurement of justice have drawn on Amartya Sen’s work on capabilities. This article addresses the relationship between Sen’s theoretical work and its interpretation in the measurement of justice, in particular by the United Nations Development Project (UNDP) and by the British Equality and Human Rights Commission and Government Equalities Office in its Equality Measurement Framework. It starts with a review of the diverse interpretations of Sen’s work, which range from considering it to be an innovative radical (...) development to locating his work within the liberal tradition. Central to the article is the question of whether it is possible to develop a meaningful operationalization of Sen’s philosophical distinctions, in particular that between capabilities and functionings, so as to inform measurement frameworks. It finds that on both conceptual and methodological grounds it is not possible to sustain this distinction in practice. This is illustrated by an analysis of the changing measurement of justice in frameworks developed by the UNDP and the UK government. Changes in the content of the measurement frameworks in radical or neoliberal directions are not constrained by Sen’s theoretical analysis, despite claims that Sen’s work informs these frameworks. The openness of Sen’s work means that it can be used by forces generated by the neoliberal environment to support their redefinition of justice. (shrink)

Cesarean delivery rates have been steadily increasing worldwide. In response, many countries have introduced target goals to reduce rates. But a focus on target goals fails to address practices embedded in standards of care that encourage, rather than discourage, cesarean sections. Obstetrical standards of care normalize use of technology, creating an imperative to use technology during labor and birth. A technological imperative is implicated in rising cesarean rates if physicians or patients fear refusing use of technology. Reproductive autonomy is at (...) stake since a technological imperative undermines patients’ ability to choose cesareans or refuse use of technology increasing the likelihood of cesareans. To address practices driven by a technological imperative I outline three physician obligations that are attached to respecting patient autonomy. These moral obligations show that a focus on respect for autonomy may prove not only an ideal ethical response but also an achievable practical response to lowering cesarean rates. (shrink)

Neoclassical and Austrian/evolutionary economic paradigms have different implications for integrating corporate social responsibility (corporate citizenship) and competitive strategy. porter's "Five Forces" model implicitly rests on neoclassical theory of the firm and is not easily reconciled with corporate social responsibility. Resource-based models of competitive strategy do not explicitly embrace a particular economic paradigm, but to the extent their conceptualization rests on neoclassical assumptions such as imperfect factor markets and profits as rents, these models also imply a trade-off between competitive advantage and (...) corporate social responsibility. Differences in Austrian/evolutionary economic model's assumptions about equilibrium, profits, and other economic concepts allow this paradigm to embrace alternative views of strategy such as the activities or dynamic capabilities views. These alternative views of strategy focus on learning and adaptation; they align more easily with corporate social responsibility. In practice this alignment comes about because social engagement facilitates the learning and adaptation that are a source of competitive advantage. Among the many business arguments for CSR such as improved employee morale/productivity or brand differentiation, this view prioritizes innovation. (shrink)

How much power does emotional dismissal have over the oppressed's ability to trust outlaw emotions, or to stand for such emotions before others? I discuss Sue Campbell's view of the interpretation of emotion in light of the political significance of emotional dismissal, in response, 1 suggest that feminist contentions of interpretation developed within dialogical communities are best suited to providing resources for expressing, interpreting, defining, and reflecting on our emotions.

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 3, Page 193-209, July 2022. This study aimed to explore experiences and practices of key research team members in obtaining informed consent for pharmacogenetics research and to identify the approaches used for enhancing understanding during the consenting process. Data collection involved 15 qualitative, in-depth interviews with key researchers who were involved in obtaining informed consent from HIV infected individuals in Uganda for participation in pharmacogenetic clinical trials. The study explored two prominent themes: approaches used to (...) convey information and enhance research participants’ understanding and challenges faced during the consenting process. Several barriers and facilitators for obtaining consent were identified. Innovative and potentially effective consenting strategies were identified in this study that should be studied and independently verified. (shrink)

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all 'stockholders' in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child (...) development, public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for 'parent replacement'—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for 'parent replenishment,' ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)

Sylvia Walsh explores Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity and the existential mode of thinking theologically appropriate to it in the context of the ...

The incredible complexity of the United States health care system can be connected to three simple outcomes: access, affordability, and quality. We should measure our progress against these three measures. While historic progress on access was made through implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the next area of focus for more results across all three measures is delivery system reform.

In this chapter we will review experimental evidence related to pharmacological moral enhancement. Firstly, we will present our recent study in which we found that a drug called propranolol could change moral judgements. Further research, which also investigated this, found similar results. Secondly, we will discuss the limitations of such approaches, when it comes to the idea of general “human enhancement”. Whilst promising effects on certain moral concepts might be beneficial to the development of theoretical moral psychology, enhancement of human (...) moral behaviour in general – to our current understanding – has more side-effects than intended effects, making it potentially harmful. We give an overview of misconceptions when taking experimental findings beyond the laboratory and discuss the problems and solutions associated with the psychological assessment of moral behaviour. Indeed, how is morality “measured” in psychology, and are those measures reliable? (shrink)

Arguments in the neuroenhancement debate are sometimes based upon idealistic scenarios involving the assumption of using a drug that has no or negligible side effects. At least it is often implicitly assumed – as technology and scientific knowledge advances - that there soon will be a drug with no or negligible side effects. We will review evidence from neuroscience, complex network research and evolution theory and demonstrate that - at least in terms of psychopharmacological intervention – on the basis of (...) our understanding of brain function it seems inconceivable that there ever will be a drug that has the desired effect without undesirable side effects. We will illustrate this by reference to enhancing edge detection in V2 in monkeys and demonstrate that even for this localised single neuron coded function there would be numerous side effects. Taking the more realistic case of pharmacological enhancement that is inevitably associated with side effects will change consequentialist arguments for neuroenhancement and have implications for the conception of autonomy, specifically in the case of performance enhancement. We conclude that a neuroethics debate that aims to inform policy decisions should take these findings into account. We hope that our article will precipitate more interdisciplinary research in neuroscience and philosophy. (shrink)

Der Begriff »Race«, aus den universitären Kulturwissenschaften stammend, will unbewusste Rassifizierungsprozesse beschreiben, die wir unweigerlich vornähmen und denen wir zugleich ausgesetzt seien. Der vorliegende Beitrag will diesen Begriff für Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie fruchtbar machen. Zwei Fallvignetten illustrieren, welche Fallstricke für Psychoanalytiker und Patienten bereit lägen, wenn »Race« in Übertragung und Gegenübertragung verleugnet werden müsse. Tauchen negativ konnotierte »racial« Phantasien auf, könne die Angst, rassistisch zu denken oder zu agieren, zum Stillstand und sogar Scheitern einer Behandlung führen. Da rassifizierte Projektionen nach (...) Ansicht der Autorin unvermeidbar seien, sieht sie die Entstehung des Gefühls einer »racial Melancholia« als Möglichkeit, dem drohenden Stillstand entgegenzuwirken. (shrink)

This article discusses how the concept of a fair finite lottery can best be extended to denumerably infinite lotteries. Techniques and ideas from non-standard analysis are brought to bear on the problem.

Charity Scott brought health law to Georgia State College of Law in the fall of 1987. Through her faculty appointment, along with her boundless energy and intellectual curiosity, she set herself on an odyssey. She began by teaching a single general health law class. This beginning led to the development of a full curriculum in the field, complete with experiential learning opportunities and a certificate in health law program. In addition to creating learning and career opportunities in health law for (...) law students, her development of the Center for Health, Law and Society created academic opportunities for leading health law faculty. (shrink)

D’après Montaigne, la guerre et la paix sont l’expression de deux tendances naturelles en l’homme : tendance à la destruction et à la cruauté d’une part, tendance à l’affection et à la compassion d’autre part. Y a-t-il un bon usage de la conflictualité ? Les Essais montrent que cette dernière n’est pas incompatible avec le lien social, et qu’elle peut même le servir, mais à condition d’élaborer des modèles de vivre ensemble dans la conflictualité, sur la base d’une éthique de (...) la différence, et non du mythe de sa suppression. C’est dans ce cadre que l’essai ou mise à l’épreuve de soi auprès des autres par la parole permet d’envisager une fraternité laïque.According to Montaigne, war and peace reflect two natural tendencies in human nature : a tendency towards destruction and cruelty on the one hand, a tendency towards affection and compassion on the other hand. Is it possible to make good use of conflict ? Montaigne’s Essays show that this latter can go along with social link, that sometimes it even begins to serve it, provided that we can elaborate patterns of living together among conflict, on the basis of an ethics of difference, instead of the myth of its suppression. In this frame, the essay of the self in connection with other people by words, allows to think fraternity in a non religious way. (shrink)

Difficile à lire, connu de réputation pour ses objections aux Méditations de Descartes, sa réhabilitation d'Épicure et des atomes, voire le caractère ambigu de ses relations avec les "libertins", Pierre Gassendi est un personnage un peu flou dans notre galerie de portraits imaginaire. Il fut cependant un auteur important, lu, connu, approuvé ou critiqué dans toute l'Europe, surtout par les savants qui voulaient fonder efficacement leur physique moderne sans renier pour autant les acquis des anciens. Les études réunies ici ont (...) cherché comme la trace et le reflet de l'œuvre de Gassendi dans les écrits d'autres auteurs qui ont vécu de son temps et jusqu'à la fin des Lumières - non seulement en France -, mais aussi en Angleterre (comme Walter Charleton, John Locke, David Hume ou Robert Boyle), en Hollande (professeurs d'Université), en Allemagne (Leibniz), en Pologne (Sociniens et "libertins"), en Italie du Nord (comme le jésuite milanais Thommaso Ceva), en Italie du Sud (comme le fondateur de l'Accademia degli Investiganti Tommaso Cornelio ou Giambattista Vico), en Espagne enfin (comme le médecin Martínez). Aujourd'hui encore Gassendi fait des adeptes parmi ceux que séduisent les chemins non battus de l'effort gratuit et de l'érudition austère, ceux que ravit absolument une certaine esthétique baroque de l'esprit pur. (shrink)

Systems architecture is seeking to cooperate with the creative processes characteristic of life on earth for novel and sustainable design outcomes. To achieve this, new design methodologies are needed to create structures and processes that are composed of the inanimate and the living the physical, the biological and the artificial to differing degrees. The principle of symbiosis is presented as a biologically inspired model for some of the design challenges, and design ethics, in systems architecture.

Entrevista realizada durante a conferência proferida por Sylvia Serbin nas atividades do “Congresso Internacional Territorialidade e Saude: desigualdades raciais e sociais em contextos locais e globais”, organizado e coordenado pelo Nucleo de Estudos e Pesquisa em Psicanalise, Identidade, Negritude e Sociedade, ocorrido de 03 a 7 de setembro de 2014, no Centro de Ciências da Saude da Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia, em Santo Antonio de Jesus/BA.

Big Data enhances the possibilities for storing personal data extracted from social media and web search on an unprecedented scale. This paper draws on the political economy of information which explains why the online industry fails to self-regulate, resulting in increasingly insidious web-tracking technologies. Content analysis of historical blogs and request for comments on HTTP cookies published by the Internet Engineering Task Force illustrates how cookie technology was introduced in the mid-1990s, amid stark warnings about increased system vulnerabilities and deceptive (...) personal data extractions. In conclusion, online users today are left with few alternatives but to enter into unconscionable contracts about the extraction of their personal data when using the Internet for private purposes. (shrink)