Background The review of human participant research by Research Ethics Committees or Institutional Review Boards is a complex multi-faceted process that cannot be reduced to an algorithm. However, this does not give RECs/ IRBs permission to be inconsistent in their specific requirements to researchers or in their final opinions. In England the Health Research Authority coordinates 67 committees, and has adopted a consistency improvement plan including a process called “Shared Ethical Debate” where multiple committees review the same project. Committee reviews (...) are compared for consistency by analysing the resulting minutes. Methods We present a description of the ShED process. We report an analysis of minutes created by research ethics committees participating in two ShED exercises, and compare them to minutes produced in a published “mystery shopper” exercise. We propose a consistency score by defining top themes for each exercise, and calculating the ratio between top themes and total themes identified by each committee for each ShED exercise. Results Our analysis highlights qualitative differences between the ShED 19, ShED 20 and “mystery shopper” exercises. The quantitative measure of consistency showed only one committee across the three exercises with more than half its total themes as top themes. The average consistency scores for the three exercises were 0.23, 0.35 and 0.32. There is a statistically significant difference between the ShED 19 exercise, and the ShED 20 and mystery shopper exercises. Conclusions ShED exercises are effective in identifying inconsistency between ethics committees and we describe a scoring method that could be used to quantify this. However, whilst a level of inconsistency is probably inevitable in research ethics committee reviews, studies must move beyond the ShED methodology to understand why inconsistency occurs, and what an acceptable level of inconsistency might be. (shrink)

We have followed with interest the commentaries arising from Moore and Donnellys1 argument that authorities in charge of research ethics committees should focus primarily on establishing code-consistent reviews.1 We broadly agree with Savulescu’s2 argument that ethics committees should become more expert, but in a different way and for a different reason. We have recently been working with the UK Health Research Authority analysing the outcomes of their ‘Shared Ethical Debate’ exercises.3 Each ShED exercise involves the circulation of a single research (...) project to a number of RECs. The resulting minutes from each REC are compared along with the final decisions made by each REC on the project under consideration. This process was originally an administrative exercise designed to promote greater consistency among the 60 or so ethics committees that were brought under the HRA ) umbrella within the UK National Health Service. Over 20 ShEDs have been run, and although the process has significant weaknesses and has not always been run consistently, the results of the exercises are fascinating. Broadly speaking, NHS RECs have been getting more consistent over time in terms of their decision-making, but the reasons for the final decisions as described in the committee minutes continue to vary widely. Qualitative research now needs to be done to understand why different committees can have such different discussions in relation to exactly the same research project and yet come to essentially the same conclusion. As part of our analysis of the ShED data, we looked at …. (shrink)

Background: Written reflections on practice are frequently requirements of nursing curricula. They are widely accepted as necessary for improving critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Faculty, are expected to review reflections and provide feedback that helps professional development and facilitates good practice. It is less clear what the actions of nurse educators should be when ethical infractions are revealed in the narratives. Objectives: We had two aims: 1) To combine insights from a literature review of empirical and theoretical research related to (...) responding to ethical issues revealed in student reflections with our experiences reviewing the reflections of undergraduate nursing and midwifery students, and 2) to construct and analyze a hybrid case from these insights in order to develop guidelines for nurse educators. Research Design: A literature review was conducted using CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, SocINDEX and ERIC databases and pertinent key words. A hybrid case was constructed of commonly encountered ethical issues using insights from the literature review and the authors’ experiences. The case was analyzed by combining Beauchamp and Childress’ principlist approach with Campbell and McCarthy’s ethical decision-making tool (Table 1). Participants and Research Context: No human participants Findings: A gap in the literature exists related to addressing ethical issues revealed in student practice reflections. However, a combination of insights from the literature and the authors’ experiences facilitated the development of a hybrid case. Subsequent case analysis facilitated the development of a series of guidelines that can be utilized to address a range of issues commonly emerging in the reflections of nursing students during practice experiences. Discussion: A number of recommendations and guidelines are provided to enable the safeguarding of students and staff and support them in practicing ethically. Conclusion: Structured ethical analysis of a constructed hybrid reflection of commonly revealed ethical issues was useful in developing guidelines for educators. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary fusion between the philosophy of science and the teaching of science can help to eradicate the disciplinary rigidity entrenched in both. In this paper I approach the history of sciencethematically, identifying general themes which transcend the boundaries of individual disciplines. Such conceptual themes can be used as a basis for an interdisciplinary introduction to university science, encouraging certain important cognitive skills not exercised during the disciplinary training emphasised in traditional approaches. Courses which teach themes such as conservation, randomness, (...) and holism/reductionism have already proved successful, and these innovations should encourage philosophers and historians to explore the exciting new possibilities which arise from stepping outside the confines of a single discipline. (shrink)

We reflect on our experience co-teaching a medical humanities elective, “Pandemics and Plagues,” which was offered to undergraduates during the Spring 2021 semester, and discuss student reactions to studying epidemic disease from multidisciplinary medical humanities perspectives while living through the world Covid-19 pandemic. The course incorporated basic microbiology and epidemiology into discussions of how epidemics from the Black Death to HIV/AIDS have been portrayed in history, literature, art, music, and journalism. Students self-assessed their learning gains and offered their insights using (...) the SALG, describing how the course enhanced their understanding of the current pandemic. In class discussions and written assignments, students paid particular attention to issues of social justice, political context, and connections between past pandemics and Covid-19. Student responses indicate enhanced understanding of the scientific and medical aspects of epidemics and also increased appreciation of the insights to be gained from the medical humanities. We discuss co-teaching the class during a real-time, twenty-four-hour-news-cycle pandemic, and the ways in which that experience underlines the value of a “critical medical humanities” approach for undergraduates. (shrink)

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)

In this article I reconsider the issue of ?transfer? in education. Received views of learning transfer tend to rely upon a version of representation in which the world and the learner are held apart. The focus falls on how this gap can be closed; how learning can be transferred. A sociomaterial perspective, by contrast, puts learner and world back together, making each available to the other. Bringing the materialist sensibility of actor-network theory to bear and drawing on empirical data collected (...) as part of a small-scale qualitative study of the experience of graduate teachers when moving from education into work, it is argued that transfer, and by implication, learning, primarily concerns the practical and takes multiple forms: contingently composed of social, textual and material practices of knowledge production, learning transfer is a relational effect of the intersection of these practices. Empirical analyses point to the practice of two broad patterns of learning transfer, termed here the representational and the relational. Thinking learning transfer as performed through disparate agencies and practices challenges the self-evidences of perspectives on learning which characterize contemporary education. Here, learning is primarily seen in terms of the intrinsic capabilities of people, regardless of the object-dependent qualities of their learning and lives. This human-centricity raises significant epistemological and ethical issues which are addressed by way of a discussion of the embedded normativities and politics of the practices of representational and relational transfer. (shrink)

This study examines the Italian Twitter landscape during the 2015 Syrian and 2022 Ukrainian refugee crises, with a focus on the evolution of anti-refugee discourse. Through the analysis of 400,000 tweets, we sought to identify attitudinal communities, track changes in user positions, and evaluate the trending potential of the communities. Our findings indicate a shift in opinion leaders within the anti-refugee community from 2015, alongside a persistent ability to influence public discourse. Additionally, while the pro-Ukrainian refugee community has grown, incorporating (...) previously neutral users, it remains loosely connected. Finally, the shifts in attitudes of Italian populist leaders regarding Syrian and Ukrainian refugees are interpreted in light of the changes in user attitudes as observed in the communication networks. This research highlights the importance of computational communication methods for investigating fringe groups absent from mainstream discourse, and underscores the necessity of content moderation and proactive digital activism to counter anti-refugee sentiment online. (shrink)

Social media applications such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have attained huge popularity, with more than three billion people and organizations predicted to have a social networking account by 2015. Social media offers a rapid avenue of communication with the public and has potential benefits for communicable disease control and surveillance. However, its application in everyday public health practice raises a number of important issues around confidentiality and autonomy. We report here a case from local level health protection where the (...) friend of an individual with meningococcal septicaemia used a social networking site to notify potential contacts. (shrink)

The theory of evolution by natural selection did not spring fully formed and unprecedented from the brain of Charles Darwin. The idea of evolution had been around, in various guises, since the time of Ancient Greece. And nor did theorizing about evolution stop with what Daniel Dennett called "Darwin's dangerous idea." In this riveting new book, bestselling science writers John and Mary Gribbin explore the history of the idea of evolution, showing how Darwin's theory built on what went before and (...) how it was developed in the twentieth century, through an understanding of genetics and the biochemical basis of evolution, into the so-called "modern synthesis" and beyond. Darwin deserves his recognition as the primary proponent of the idea of natural selection, but as the authors show, his contribution was one link in a chain that extends back into antiquity and is still being forged today. (shrink)

In the present study it was shown that decision heuristics and confidence judgements play important roles in the building of preferences. Based on a dual-process account of thinking, the study compared people who did well versus poorly on a series of decision heuristics and overconfidence judgement tasks. The two groups were found to differ with regard to their information search behaviour in introduced multiattribute choice tasks. High performers on the judgemental tasks were less influenced in their decision processes by numerical (...) information format (probabilities vs. frequencies) compared to low performers. They also looked at more attributes and spent more time on the multiattribute choice tasks. The results reveal that performance on decision heuristics and overconfidence tasks has a bearing both on heuristic and analytic processes in multiattribute decision making. (shrink)

The research and publication practices by which scientists produce biomedical knowledge about race and ethnicity remain largely unexamined despite increasing interest in biological explanations for health disparities by race, as well as prominent critiques by social scientists highlighting the implications of conceptualizing race as a biological category. Although a growing number of studies on lab and research practices are helping to map meanings of race and ethnicity on notions of difference and health, we still have very little understanding of the (...) earlier funding application stage or of the resulting publications. We know that knowledge production can involve a range of different processes, including consensus building, strategic and instrumental decision making, as well as conscious and subconscious cognitive filtering, through which we direct analytic attention only to those aspects of a problem or topic that are defined as “relevant” and “important.” These processes also involve the “translation” of ideas such as race and ethnicity for different audiences, which occurs in broader contexts of cultural norms and institutional rules and practices. (shrink)

A culture of thought : the bifurcation of nature -- Introducing Whitehead's philosophy : the lure of Whitehead -- "A thorough-going realism": Whitehead on cause and conformation -- The value of existence -- Societies, the social, and subjectivity -- Language and the body : from signification to symbolism -- This nature which is not one -- Capitalism, process, and abstraction.

The Literary Format of Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy is undoubtedly one of its more distinguishing features. During the seventeenth century, the standard convention for a work in metaphysics was a treatise or disputation. Descartes's conversational tone, writing in the first person present tense, and unique organization of chapters into "meditations," was clearly a departure from the norm. At first glance, given the sentiments expressed in the work's dedicatory letter and preface, the unconventional writing style appears to be a rhetorical (...) device. As architect for the new science, Descartes was certainly eager to gain approval for his philosophical agenda from the proper authorities, such as the .. (shrink)

In 2000, Mark Palmer, one of the National Endowment for Democracy’s founders and Vice Chairman of Freedom House—an organization funded entirely by the U.S. Congress—founded a new government-supported group, Friends of Falun Gong. By perusing FoFG’s annual tax filings, one discovers that FoFG has contributed funds to Sounds of Hope Radio, New Tang Dynasty TV, and the Epoch Times—all Falun Gong media outlets. FoFG has also contributed to Dragon Springs and to Shen Yun, as well as to Falun Gong’s PR (...) arm. In order to contextualize the U.S. government’s funding of Falun Gong, it will also be helpful to examine a handful of additional U.S. agency activities, such as the NED’s funding of Liu Xiaobo, the Hong Kong protests, and other China-related and Tibet-related groups. (shrink)

Long-exposure photographs present distinctive philosophical challenges. They do not quite look like things in motion. Experiences of such photos take time, but not in a way that mimics the time of the motion depicted. In fact, it would not be off base to worry that these photos fail, strictly speaking, to depict motion or things-in-time. And if they fail to depict motion, then it is an interesting question what, if anything, they succeed in depicting. These timeless traces of temporal patterns (...) are thus a challenge to how we understand pictures. In addition to being representations, however, such photographs are recordings. They witlessly register aspects of scenes in a manner that can be replayed. The following shows that recording is a valuable and neglected tool for investigating representational practices. Aspects of what photos record also figure in their representational contents, and this provides a way of approaching the photography of events in time. This article proceeds by framing, and then answering, three questions. First, what do photos record about temporal patterns? Second, which aspects of such recordings also show up in photos’ representational contents? And third, do these pictures depict, rather than merely represent, such temporal patterns? (shrink)

Extrinsic motivations like intellectual property protections and fiscal incentives continue to occupy the centre stage in debates on innovation policies. Joseph Schumpeter had, however, argued that the motive to accumulate private property can only explain part of innovative activities. In his view, “the joy of creating, of getting things done” associated with the behavioural traits that “seek out difficulties…and takes delight in ventures” stand out as the most independent factor of behaviour in explaining innovation and economic development, especially in early (...) capitalist societies. Taking the case of ‘grassroot’ innovators in India, we re-examine the motivations behind innovative behaviour. Drawing upon the theory of effectance motivation we construct operational indicators of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to innovate. Interestingly, we find that pure extrinsic forms of motivation drive only a fraction of individual innovative behaviour. A large amount of innovative behaviour is motivated either by intrinsic motivations or by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Also, conceptualising innovation as a three stage process involving idea generation, experimentation and application, we find evidence of motivation-shifts. The importance of intrinsic motivation is comparatively greater during the early stage, when uncertainty about innovation is high. The importance of extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, increases when innovation is complete, awaiting application. We then outline a few implications of these findings for policy making. (shrink)

The French philosopher Renaud Barbaras remarked that late in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s career, “The phenomenology of perception fulfills itself as a philosophy of expression.” In _Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty: Aesthetics, Philosophy of Biology, and Ontology, _Véronique M. Fóti_ _addresses the guiding yet neglected theme of expression in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. She traces Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about how individuals express creative or artistic impulses through his three essays on aesthetics, his engagement with animality and the “new biology” in the second of his lecture courses (...) on nature of 1957–58, and in his late ontology, articulated in 1964 in the fragmentary text of _Le visible et l’invisible _. With the exception of a discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s 1945 essay “Cezanne’s Doubt,” Fóti engages with Merleau-Ponty’s late and final thought, with close attention to both his scientific and philosophical interlocutors, especially the continental rationalists. Expression shows itself, in Merleau-Ponty’s thought, to be primordial, and this innate and fundamental nature of expression has implications for his understanding of artistic creation, science, and philosophy. (shrink)

In “The Trouble with Tracing,” Manuel Vargas argues that tracing-based approaches to moral responsibility are considerably more problematic than previously acknowledged. Vargas argues that many initially plausible tracing-based cases of moral responsibility turn out to be ones in which the epistemic condition for moral responsibility is not satisfied, thus suggesting that contrary to initial appearances the agent isn’t morally responsible for the action in question. In the present paper, I outline two different strategies for responding to Vargas’s (...) trouble with tracing. I then show how further consideration of the epistemic condition for moral responsibility renders tracing significantly less problematic than Vargas claims. (shrink)

Stibbard-Hawkes challenges the link between symbolic material evidence and behavioural modernity. Extending this to non-human species, we find that personal adornment, decoration, figurative art, and musical instruments may not uniquely distinguish human cognition. These common criteria may ineffectively distinguish symbolic from non-symbolic cognition or symbolic cognition is not uniquely human. It highlights the need for broader comparative perspectives.

Questions of value are central to understanding alternative practices of food exchange. This study introduces a practice-based approach to value that challenges the dominant views, which capture value as either an input for or an outcome of practices of exchange. Building on a longitudinal ethnographic study on food collectives, I show how value, rather than residing in something that people share, or in something that objects have, is an ideal target that continuously unfolds and evolves in action. I found that (...) people organized their food collectives around pursuing three kinds of value-ideals, namely good food, good price and good community. These value-ideals became reproduced in food collectives through what I identified as valuing modes, by which people evaluated the goodness of food, prices and community. My analysis revealed that, while participating in food collectives in order to pursue their value-ideals, people were likely to have differing reasons for pursuing them and tended to attach different meanings to the same value-ideal. I argue that understanding how value as an ideal target is reproduced through assessing and assigning value is essential in further explorations of the formation of value and in better understanding the dynamics of organizing alternative practices of food exchange. (shrink)

Standard models of adolescent risk taking posit that the cognitive abilities of adolescents and adults are equivalent, and that increases in risk taking that occur during adolescence are the result of socio emotional differences in impulsivity, sensation seeking, and lack of self-control. Fuzzy-trace theory incorporates these socio emotional differences. However, it predicts that there are also cognitive differences between adolescents and adults, specifically that there are developmental increases in gist-based intuition that reflects understanding. Gist understanding, as opposed to verbatim-based analysis, (...) generally has been hypothesized to have a protective effect on risk taking in adolescence. Gist understanding is also an essential element of informed consent regarding risks in medical decision- making. Evidence thus supports the argument that adolescents’ status as mature minors should be treated as an exception rather than a presumption, because accuracy in verbatim analysis is not mature gist understanding. Use of the exception should be accompanied by medical experts’ input on the bottom-line gist of risks involved in treatment. (shrink)

Way-finding (WF) is the ability to move around efficiently and find the way from a starting point to a destination. It is a component of spatial navigation, a coordinate and goal-directed movement of one’s self through the environment. In the present study, the relationship between WF tasks (route tracing and shortcut finding) and individual factors were explored with the hypothesis that WF tasks would be predicted by different types of cognitive, affective, motivational variables and personality factors. A group of (...) 116 university students (88 F.) was conducted along a route in a virtual environment and then asked first to trace the same route again, and then to find a shortcut between the start and end points. Several instruments assessing visuospatial working memory, mental rotation ability, self-efficacy, spatial anxiety, positive attitude to exploring, and personality traits were administered. The results showed that a latent spatial ability factor (measured with the visuospatial working memory and mental rotations tests) - controlled for gender - predicted route-tracing performance, while self-report measures of anxiety, efficacy, and pleasure in exploring, and some personality traits were more likely to predict shortcut-finding performance. We concluded that both personality and cognitive abilities affect WF performance, but differently, depending on the requirements of the task. (shrink)

We propose a new approach for tracing value change. Value change may lead to a mismatch between current value priorities in society and the values for which technologies were designed in the past, such as energy technologies based on fossil fuels, which were developed when sustainability was not considered a very important value. Better anticipating value change is essential to avoid a lack of social acceptance and moral acceptability of technologies. While value change can be studied historically and qualitatively, (...) we propose a more quantitative approach that uses large text corpora. It uses probabilistic topic models, which allow us to trace values that are latent. We demonstrate the approach for five types of value change in technology. Our approach is useful for testing hypotheses about value change, such as verifying whether value change has occurred and identifying patterns of value change. The approach can be used to trace value change for various technologies and text corpora, including scientific articles, newspaper articles, and policy documents. (shrink)

The notion of accountability was introduced by Harold Garfinkel in the opening pages of Studies in Ethnomethodology as part of his ‘central recommendation’ for sociological inquiry. Though the term itself first appears in the Studies, it will be argued that elements of the idea were already discernible in earlier writings. The current article traces the development of the notion from its early emergence in the proto-ethnomethodological period, through its elaboration in the Studies, and, finally, to its refinement in certain later (...) works produced toward the end of the author’s career. In so doing, it reveals the centrality of the notion to ethnomethodologically-informed study and shows its enduring contribution to social theory. (shrink)

Drunk drivers and other culpably incapacitated wrongdoers are often taken to pose a problem for reasons-responsiveness accounts of moral responsibility. These accounts predicate moral responsibility upon an agent having the capacities to perceive and act upon moral reasons, and the culpably incapacitated wrongdoers lack exactly those capacities at the time of their wrongdoing. Many reasons-responsiveness advocates thus expand their account of responsibility to include a tracing condition: The culpably incapacitated wrongdoer is blameworthy despite his incapacitation precisely because he is (...) responsible for becoming incapacitated. As some skeptics have suggested, it is not clear that we need tracing. Here, however, I make a stronger case against tracing: I show that tracing gets things wrong. I consider a new sort of case, the case of the Odysseus agent, whose incapacitation is non-culpable (sometimes merely permissible and sometimes praiseworthy). Tracing would have us hold responsible and therefore blame unlucky Odysseus agents, Odysseus agents who commit a wrongdoing in the throes of their non-culpably induced incapacitation. But we should not hold these unlucky Odysseus agents responsible for their incapacitated wrongdoing. Because tracing gets these cases wrong, we should reject tracing. (shrink)

Cet article explore une problématique de l'identité personnelle alternative à celle du contrôle policier pour étudier les traces numériques que créent ou laissent les usagers sur Internet et sur les dispositifs informatiques en général. Cette problématique embrasse toutes les traces, numériques et non numériques. Le constat de départ est celui d'une évolution récente de la présentation de soi dans l'espace public qui expose désormais des données jadis réservées à l'intimité. L'hypothèse conséquente est qu'existe un lien entre l'affichage d'une identité plus (...) détaillée et la conscience de vivre dans une société incertaine. Dans cette perspective, les motivations qui président à cet affichage sont la recherche de l'estime de soi et de la considération par autrui, deux composantes du lien social, ébranlées dans les sociétés incertaines. Une attention particulière est également accordée, dans ce climat d'incertitude, à la géolocalisation qui contribue au travers de divers appareils à situer en temps réel et constamment les individus les uns par rapport aux autres.This paper explores an approach to personal identity issues that offers an alternative to police surveillance for investigating digital traces created or left behind by people who use the Internet and information technology in general. The approach covers all traces, whether digital or not. The paper posits a recent trend in which personal identities are presented in a public sphere that has begun to exhibit information of a type that was formerly divulged only in intimate circles. The ensuing hypothesis is that there is a link between the public display of more detailed personal identities and people s awareness of living in a society of uncertainty. If this is indeed the case, then the reason underlying the display of one s private identity in public is a quest for self-esteem and for the esteem of others - both being integral to the social cohesion now being undermined by uncertainty in society. In this context of uncertainty, particular attention is given to geolocation, which, through various technical systems, enables individuals to locate each other in real time, and at any time. (shrink)

In the last decades philosophers of science and social scientists promoted the view that knowledge of mechanisms might help causal inference considerably in the social sciences. Mechanisms, however, can only assist causal inference effectively if scientists have a means to identify them correctly. Some scholars suggested that process-tracing might be a helpful strategy in this respect. Shared criteria to assess its performance, however, are not available yet; furthermore, the criteria proposed so far tie the validity of process-tracing findings (...) to the specific kind of evidence it uses. In this paper I shall propose a criterion to assess process-tracing performance in cases in which favorable epistemic circumstances do not occur and the existing criteria thus fail to apply. The criterion I propose does not double as a condition for validity. Rather, it aims to assess whether the mechanism process-tracing outlines constitutes admissible evidence for the hypothesis at hand. It will be argued that only if this requirement is fulfilled process-tracing can be used as an effective complement for causal inference. (shrink)

Digital contact tracing, in combination with widespread testing, has been a focal point for many plans to “reopen” economies while containing the spread of Covid‐19. Most digital contact tracing projects in the United States and Europe have prioritized privacy protections in the form of local storage of data on smartphones and the deidentification of information. However, in the prioritization of privacy in this narrow form, there is not sufficient attention given to weighing ethical trade‐offs within the context of (...) a public health pandemic or to the need to evaluate safety and effectiveness of software‐based technology applied to public health. (shrink)

This article traces the career arc of Dutch psychoanalyst Joost A. M. Meerloo by examining his biography and his psychology of interrogation and confession. His life story, particularly his experiences during the German occupation of the Netherlands and his escape to England during World War II, shaped his views on these issues, as well as his rise to prominence as an expert on these topics in the United States. His psychoanalytic perspectives on interrogation and confession, including false confession, reflected the (...) zeitgeist of the First Wave of Cold War interrogation tactics and related scholarship. His career as a scholar of interrogation faded with the study of distinct interrogation tactics used by communists during the Korean War, the emergence of experimental social psychology, and a growing cohort of scholars who rejected his psychoanalytic views in favor of more contemporary approaches. For these reasons, his work remains undervalued, increasing the risks that today’s scholars will fail to recognize his larger contributions and his warnings about vulnerability and psychologists’ roles in military interrogations. The article reviews the rise and fall of the career of Joost A. M. Meerloo as a scholar of Cold War interrogation, including his contributions and his unheeded warnings about vulnerability and psychologists’ roles in military interrogations. (shrink)

Through the overall situation of athletes’ competition pressure, the pressure level of participating athletes can be understood and revealed. Analyzing the sources of stress and influencing factors of athletes can find measures to relieve and reduce stress and provide theoretical reference for the regulation of athletes’ competition pressure. Based on genetic algorithm and neural network theory, this paper proposes a method of tracing the sports competition pressure based on genetic algorithm backpropagation neural network to solve the problem that traditional (...) neural network learning algorithm is slow and easy to fall into local minimum. There is no significant difference between male and female athletes in the level of competition pressure. Athletes have the same training methods and the same goals, and the competition pressure tends to be the same, with no obvious difference; athletes with different educational backgrounds have no significant differences in training, academics, sports injuries, interpersonal relationships, social expectations, and evaluations. Due to the particularity of the stage, the competition pressure of fourth-year undergraduate and third-year masters is significantly higher than that of other grades. The number of athletes participating in college table tennis tournaments has very significant differences in competition dimensions. There is significant difference in training and self-expectation dimension difference. The competition pressure of athletes who participated in the college table tennis championship for the first time was significantly higher than that of athletes who participated repeatedly. There were significant differences between athletes before and after adapting to the venue. Before adapting to the venue, the competition pressure of athletes is generally greater. After adapting to the venue, the competition pressure of athletes has been relieved. (shrink)

Let a trace be a computably enumerable set of natural numbers such that V[m]={n:〈n,m〉∈V}\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${V^{[m]} = \{n : \langle n, m\rangle \in V \}}$$\end{document} is finite for all m, where 〈.,.〉\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\langle^{.},^{.}\rangle}$$\end{document} denotes an appropriate pairing function. After looking at some basic properties of traces like that there is no uniform enumeration of all traces, we prove varied results on traceability and variants thereof, where (...) a function f:N→N\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${f : \mathbb{N} \rightarrow \mathbb{N}}$$\end{document} is traceable via a trace V if for all m,〈f(m),m〉∈V.\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${m, \langle f(m), m\rangle \in V.}$$\end{document} Then we turn to lattices Ltr(V)=({W:V⊆WandWatrace},⊆),\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\textit{\textbf{L}}_{tr}(V) = (\{W : V \subseteq W \, {\rm and} \, W \, {\rm a} \, {\rm trace}\}, \, \subseteq),$$\end{document}V a trace. Here, we study the close relationship to E=({A:A⊆Nc.e.},⊆)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal{E} = (\{A : A \subseteq \mathbb{N} \quad c.e.\}, \subseteq)}$$\end{document}, automorphisms, isomorphisms, and isomorphic embeddings. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension in our everyday moral responsibility practices. On the one hand, it is commonly assumed that moral responsibility requires voluntary control: an agent can be morally responsible only for those things that fall within the scope of her voluntary control. On the other hand, we regularly praise and blame individuals for mental states and conditions that appear to fall outside the scope of their voluntary control, such as desires, emotions, beliefs, and other attitudes. In order to (...) resolve this apparent tension, many philosophers appeal to a tracing principle to argue that agents are morally responsible for those attitudes whose existence can be traced back, causally, to a voluntary action or omission in the past. My aim in this article is to critically evaluate this tracing strategy and to argue that it gives us a misguided picture of when and why we are morally responsible for our attitudes. I argue that we should accept a ‘judgment sensitivity’ condition of moral responsibility rather than a ‘voluntary control’ condition, and defend this account against various objections. (shrink)

La dévotion au Christ puis à son cœur a son enracinement dans la tradition johannique de la conception du Dieu-Amour symbolisée par la plaie du côté du Christ sur la croix, considérée comme l’entrée vers son cœur. Elle a donné naissance à un courant spirituel homogène qui, de Marguerite-Marie Alacoque à Léon Dehon, met au centre de la théologie mystique, la dévotion à l’humanité du Christ. Celle-ci a une place privilégiée dans l’ordre des chartreux depuis les origines. Cette étude se (...) propose donc d’en évoquer les traces diachroniques à travers la triple thématique de l’imitation de Jésus-Christ, de la méditation de la Passion et de l’attachement sensible au cœur vulnéré du Christ, qui traversent les écrits cartusiens, notamment au XVIe siècle dans l’œuvre de Jean-Juste Lansperge et au XVIIe siècle dans celle de Dom Innocent Le Masson. (shrink)

Ritual studies, a pivotal domain in the scholarly tradition of ancient China, occupy a crucial role in the exploration of humanistic and theological disciplines. Utilizing bibliometric analysis, corpus linguistics, and scientometric mapping, this paper examines a comprehensive dataset of 15,221 ritual studies articles spanning from 1916 to 2022, sourced from the CNKI database. The focus of these studies has traditionally been on ideological exploration, textual scrutiny, and archaeological verification, with a notable shift in the post-reform era from Confucian critiques to (...) authentication of ancient rituals, propelled by significant archaeological discoveries. Entering the 21st century, the field has broadened to intersect with intellectual history, philosophy, literature, and theological studies, reflecting an expanded methodological repertoire that includes ideological articulation, historical comparative analysis, and interdisciplinary exploration. This research introduces an innovative methodological approach by employing word embedding and semantic networks to delineate and trace underrepresented yet crucial research trajectories within the discipline. Through this semantic analysis, key scholars such as Kuang Heng, Cao Bao, Wang Chong, He Yang, Chen Li, and Chu Yinliang, along with cornerstone texts like the "Collected Commentaries on the Book of Rites" and "Illustrations of the Rites Classic," are identified as significant yet previously underexplored nodes within the academic discourse. This study not only sheds light on the evolution and current state of ritual studies in China but also highlights the profound philosophical and religious implications of these rituals in understanding the divine, the moral, and the human condition, thus contributing to a deeper comprehension of the spiritual and ethical dimensions that these practices embody. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek's fascinating and complex attempt at an appropriation of the authentic legacy of Christianity for a revivified politics of universality is traced in the light of certain affinities to concepts of Carl Schmitt's political theology. It is argued that these two thinkers not only share a similar canon of thinkers, but also an emphasis on the necessity of maintaining and/or reintroducing a distinction between friend and enemy for a properly political thought. Moreover, particular attention is paid to the way (...) the relationship between Judaism and Christianity is enacted in several of Žižek's texts. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to address the underrepresentation of Iranian women architects in historical narratives, exploring the perishable traces of their work and contributions to the field of architecture. Inspired by Carla Lonzi's call for women to consider their narrative incomplete and the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), I delve into the unique challenges Iranian women architects face and their impact on architectural history. I examine the historiographical review of Iranian women architects, their work, and their contributions (...) to the field, highlighting the importance of preserving and disseminating this often-overlooked knowledge. By investigating the current editorial challenges, I explore how archived material should be disseminated and the agency of such material in shaping a more inclusive and accurate historical narrative. Furthermore, I discuss the role of resources, archives, and new technologies in preserving and accessing the work of Iranian women architects. Considering data feminism and information visualization, I consider the implications of algorithms and digital technologies on accessing archived information and the potential for a more inclusive historical narrative. Through the lens of Iranian women architects, this paper contributes to the broader discussion on the representation and history of women in architecture by unearthing and preserving the perishable traces of their work. (shrink)

Autopoiesis and systems theory are terms often treated as synonymous by lawyers. This sleight‐of‐phrase elides the space between autopoiesis and systems theory, removing its content. Within this eliminated space there exist numerous understandings of systems approaches in law; one such understanding is complexity theory. Complexity theory entails a very different systems view of law to that of autopoiesis. In this paperIexplore the concepts of complexity and their relevance to law. In tracing an outline of complexity, a number of contradictions, (...) paradoxes, and additional questions are exposed which require further detailed analysis in the future. (shrink)

This essay explores the sense and embrace of risk in Clarice Lispector’s writing. Beginning with a newspaper contribution from her Crônicas, the essay foregrounds the dimension of repetitive tracing to transmit the notion that the risk of living is ongoing, inescapably, but that there is a possibility of stepping forward to embrace this risk differently. The essay then turns to a scene that captures this gesture well: the scene of a woman bathing in the sea, which Clarice returned to (...) and published several times. This gesture is compared to philosophical considerations of risk in terms of what escapes reason and calls for a different disposition – of faith (Søren Kierkegaard, Blaise Pascal) or ecstasy (Georges Bataille). The essay examines the particular notions of joy and saber that Clarice insists on as the consequence of risk, and it explores different responses to this joy’s discovery in Clarice’s fiction, showing their relation to what psychoanalysis calls “feminine jouissance.” This joy is a human experience that exceeds cultural formatting. Clarice’s writing, I suggest, is traversed by a nomadic voice beyond meaning whose work bears a striking resemblance to that of drawing and the voice in Willy Apollon’s account of Haitian Vodou. I propose that writing in Clarice Lispector is the field of an ethics of risk insofar as it welcomes, upholds, and gives what has been excluded from language. (shrink)

Recent writers on negligence and culpable ignorance have argued that there are two kinds of culpable ignorance: tracing cases, in which the agent’s ignorance traces back to some culpable act or omission of hers in the past that led to the current act, which therefore arguably inherits the culpability of that earlier failure; and non-tracing cases, in which there is no such earlier failure, so the agent’s current state of ignorance must be culpable in its own right. An (...) unusual but intriguing justification for blaming agents in non-tracing cases is provided by Attributionism, which holds that we are as blameworthy for our non-voluntary emotional reactions, spontaneous attitudes, and the ensuing patterns of awareness as we are for our voluntary actions. The Attributionist explanation for why some non-tracing cases involve culpability is an appealing one, even though it has limited scope. After providing a deeper account of why we should take the Attributionist position seriously, I use recent psychological research to argue for a new account of the conditions under which agents are culpable for straightforward instances of blameworthy acts. That account is extended to blameworthiness for non-voluntary responses. I conclude that even when the agent’s failure to notice arises from a nonvoluntary objectionable attitude, very few such cases are ones in which Attributionism implies that the agent is blameworthy for her act. (shrink)

How can Africans escape the control of the complex power relationships established during Colonization and successfully achieve self-development? More importantly, and the primary concern of this book, can African female characters ever hope to arrive at such individuation given the dual challenges of the power structures defined and enforced by European colonizers and the patriarchal structures that contort issues related to gender? Tracing Personal Expansion reads late 20th Century works by African female novelists Buchi Emecheta, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Calixthe (...) Beyala as modern Bildungsromane, novels of self-development, to reveal the dynamics, complexities, and challenges the characters and authors experience. By exploring the possibility of self-development in African female protagonists, this engrossing work augments existing feminist critiques that have analyzed the possibilities and potentials for the individuation of mostly Western, mostly European female characters. (shrink)

This study investigates the distribution of traces and their antecedents. The first chapter outlines the Government and Binding theory, enabling those unfamiliar with this framework to understand the ensuing discussion. The second chapter concerns the Empty Category Principle. Argument/adjunct asymmetries are shown to follow from an independently motivated indexing algorithm, which entails that adjuncts display an impoverished indexing. The third chapter deduces the properties of A-chains from independently motivated principles, offering a thorough examination of Super-Raising, Improper Movement, and the Local (...) Binding Condition. The final chapter challenges the standard assumptions regarding Case requirements on traces. (shrink)

This research statement presents a roadmap for the ethical evaluation of contact tracing apps. Assuming the possible development of an effective and secure contact tracing app, this roadmap explores three ethical concerns—privacy, data monopolists and coercion- based on three scenarios. The first scenario envisions and critically evaluates an app that is built on the conceptualization of privacy as anonymity and a mere individual right rather than a social value. The second scenario sketches and critically discusses an app that (...) adequately addresses privacy concerns but is facilitated by data monopolists such as Google and Apple. The final scenario discusses the coerced installation and use of a privacy-friendly, independently developed contact tracing app. The main worry is coercion through societal exclusion and limited societal participation. The statement concludes with three suggestions for designing an ethical contact tracing app and a research agenda. (shrink)

This commentary discusses the relation between Grodzinsky's target article and Friederici's (1995) model of syntactic processing. The two models can be made more compatible if it is assumed that people with Broca's aphasia have a problem in trace construction rather than trace deletion, and that the process of trace construction takes place during the second early syntactic substage of Friederici's model.