Throughout the animal kingdom, p53 genes function to restrain mobile elements and recent observations indicate that transposons become derepressed in human cancers. Together, these emerging lines of evidence suggest that cancers driven by p53 mutations could represent “transpospoathies,” i.e. disease states linked to eruptions of mobile elements. The transposopathy hypothesis predicts that p53 acts through conserved mechanisms to contain transposon movement, and in this way, prevents tumor formation. How transposon eruptions provoke neoplasias is not well understood but, from a broader (...) perspective, this hypothesis also provides an attractive framework to explore unrestrained mobile elements as inciters of late‐onset idiopathic disease.Also see the video abstract here. (shrink)

Introduction -- Part one : Challenges to the subject -- Subjects in subjection : bodies, desires, and the psychic life of norms -- Moral subjects and agents of morality -- Part two : Responsibility -- Responsibility as response : Levinas and responsibility for others -- Ambivalent desires of responsibility : Laplanche and psychoanalytic translations -- Part three : Critique -- The aporia of critique and the future of moral philosophy -- Critique and political ethics : justice as a question.

Two fundamental rules of reasoning are Universal Generalisation and Existential Instantiation. Applications of these rules involve stipulations such as ‘Let n be an arbitrary number’ or ‘Let John be an arbitrary Frenchman’. Yet the semantics underlying such stipulations are far from clear. What, for example, does ‘n’ refer to following the stipulation that n be an arbitrary number? In this paper, we argue that ‘n’ refers to a number—an ordinary, particular number such as 58 or 2,345,043. Which one? We do (...) not and cannot know, because the reference of ‘n’ is fixed arbitrarily. Underlying this proposal is a more general thesis: Arbitrary Reference : It is possible to fix the reference of an expression arbitrarily. When we do so, the expression receives its ordinary kind of semantic-value, though we do not and cannot know which value in particular it receives. Our aim in this paper is defend AR. In particular, we argue that AR can be used to provide an account of instantial reasoning, and we suggest that AR can also figure in offering new solutions to a range of difficult philosophical puzzles. (shrink)

The influence of conscience on nurses in terms of guilt has frequently been described but its impact on care has received less attention. The aim of this study was to describe nurses' conceptions of the influence of conscience on the provision of inpatient care. The study employed a phenomenographic approach and analysis method. Fifteen nurses from three hospitals in western Sweden were interviewed. The results showed that these nurses considered conscience to be an important factor in the exercise of their (...) profession, as revealed by the descriptive categories: conscience as a driving force; conscience as a restricting factor; and conscience as a source of sensitivity. They perceived that conscience played a role in nursing actions involving patients and next of kin, and was an asset that guided them in their efforts to provide high quality care. (shrink)

Standpoint theory is based on the insight that those who are marginalized or oppressed have distinctive epistemic resources with which to understand social structures. Inasmuch as these structures shape our understanding of the natural and lifeworlds, standpoint theorists extend this principle to a range of biological and physical as well as social sciences. Standpoint theory has been articulated as a social epistemology and as an aligned methodological stance. It provides the rationale for ‘starting research from the margins’ and for expanding (...) the diversity of backgrounds and experience represented in scientific communities. (shrink)

Another view has entered the metaethical debate—relaxed realism [Dworkin 1996; Parfit 2011; Scanlon 2014]. Relaxed realists claim that there are irreducible moral properties, but seek to avoid the...

Ethicists and social scientists alike have advocated for the inclusion of vulnerable populations in research and decision-making on climate engineering. Unfortunately, there have been few efforts to do so. The research presented in this paper was designed to build knowledge about how vulnerable populations think about climate engineering. The goal of this manuscript is to bring the ethics literature on climate engineering into dialogue with emerging social science data documenting the perspectives of vulnerable populations. The results indicate some concerns among (...) vulnerable populations may resemble those outlined by ethicists. However, the perspectives expressed by interviewees also extend previous ethical treatments by indicating ways in which climate engineering could compound existing injustices. (shrink)

Standpoint theory is an explicitly political as well as social epistemology. It’s distinctive features are commitment to understand the social locations that shape the epistemic capacities and resources of individuals in structural terms, and a recognition that those who are marginalized within hierarchically structured systems of social differentiation are often epistemically advantaged. In some crucial domains they know more and know better as a contingent function of their situated experience and knowledge. This “inversion thesis” counters the alignment of social with (...) epistemic privilege. (shrink)

Material traces of the past are notoriously inscrutable; they rarely speak with one voice, and what they say is never unmediated. They stand as evidence only given a rich scaffolding of interpretation which is, itself, always open to challenge and revision. And yet archaeological evidence has dramatically expanded what we know of the cultural past, sometimes demonstrating a striking capacity to disrupt settled assumptions. The questions we address in Evidential Reasoning are: How are these successes realized? What gives us confidence (...) in the credibility and robustness, the trustworthiness, of the evidential claims based on archaeological data? And, what constitute best practices in building evidential claims, critically scrutinizing them and putting them to work in archaeological contexts? Rather than retreat to abstractions about how how science operates in the ideal, we approach this question by interrogating a number of close-to-the-ground case studies with the aim of teasing out the wisdom embodied in archaeological practice. The cases we consider – of fieldwork, strategies for working with old evidence, and the role of external resources – illuminate the role of various types of inferential scaffolding and bring into focus practice-grounded epistemic norms that we believe serve archaeologists better than the all-or-nothing ideals of truth and objectivity that dominate programmatic debate. (shrink)

Die vertiefte Auseinandersetzung mit raumbezogenen Forschungsthemen, die seit etwa 20 Jahren unter dem Stichwort ”Spatial Turn“ in den Kulturwissenschaften stattfindet, bleibt bezüglich ihrer begrifflichen und philosophischen Grundlagen defizitär. Obwohl von der Philosophie für die Herausbildung dieser Forschungsrichtung wichtige Impulse ausgegangen sind, hat sie selbst bislang keine führende Rolle übernommen. Ziel des Bandes ist es daher, durch eine deutlichere Profilierung grundlegender Unterscheidungen und Begriffe zur aktuellen Raumforschung beizutragen. Der ”Ort“ wird dabei - auch gegenüber dem Raum - als philosophischer Gegenstand gefasst (...) und erscheint als grundlegendes Prinzip der Kulturwissenschaften - und nicht (nur) als deren Thema. (shrink)

Neither the range of potential results from genomic research that might be returned to participants nor future uses of stored data and biospecimens can be fully predicted at the outset of a study. Informed consent procedures require clear explanations about how and by whom decisions are made and what principles and criteria apply. To ensure trustworthy research governance, there is also a need for empirical studies incorporating public input to evaluate and strengthen these processes.

I develop a theory of what we mean by the 'look' sentences that we use to describe our visual experiences, and on that basis develop a new adverbial theory of what it is to have a visual experience with a certain character.

In Harry Potter, Hagrid is written as the “animal lover” who appreciates all creatures. Analyzing Hagrid’s interactions with animals is a unique approach to theorizing animal ethics at Hogwarts. This article problematizes Hagrid’s characterization within the “animal lover” trope. Many of Hagrid’s actions are imperialist toward animals as collectible, exploitable, and only valuable insofar as they provide something for humans, which contradicts the definition of moral status. The potential for “animal lovers” to relate to Hagrid suggests a need to more (...) closely examine this trope in other works of fiction to avoid perpetuating unethical standards of animal care. (shrink)

My main aim is to clarify what we mean by ‘look’ sentences such as (1) below – ones that we use to talk about visual experience: -/- (1) The ball looked red to Sue -/- This is to help better understand a part of natural language that has so far resisted treatment, and also to help better understand the nature of visual experience. -/- By appealing to general linguistic principles I argue for the following account. First, we use (1) to (...) talk about an event. Second, we use the verb ‘look’ to specify the kind of event about which we are talking – it is a looking event. Third, we use the subject ‘the ball’ to specify a stimulus of the event – something that looks some way in the event. Fourth, we use the adjunct ‘to Sue’ to specify an experiencer of the event – someone to whom things look some way in the event. Finally, we use the complement ‘red’ to specify a way of the event – a way in which the event occurs (I take ways of occurring to be properties of events). Which way do we use ‘red’ in (1) to specify? I argue: the maximally specific way w such that the following is generically true: looking events whose stimulus is red occur in way w (it is important that this is understood generically: this is what does much of the work in explaining our use of (1) and other ‘look’ sentences). Putting this together, what we mean by (1) is: there was a looking event whose stimulus was the ball, whose experiencer was Sue, and which occurred in the maximally specific way that looking events occur when their stimulus is red. -/- This account of how we use ‘red’ in (1) is one of the most interesting aspects of my thesis. It extends to an account of how we use ‘proud’ in ‘John walks proud’, ‘as if he is American’ in ‘John talks as if he is American’, ‘like a duck’ in ‘John sounds like a duck’, and so on. In each case we use the expression in question to specify a way: the maximally specific way proud people walk, the maximally specific way American people talk, and so on. So the study of ‘look’ sentences has much to tell us about the functioning of many other English language constructions, and suggests that ways have a significant role to play in the semantics of natural language – a fact that has not yet been sufficiently recognised by linguists or philosophers of language. -/- My thesis also has implications for the philosophy of perception. One of the central questions about perception is: What is the nature of visual experience? What is it, for example, for a ball to look red to Sue? My thesis offers an answer: What it is for the ball to look red to Sue is for whatever it is that we mean by ‘The ball looks red to Sue’ to be the case, and what we mean by ‘The ball looks red to Sue’ is that there is a looking event whose stimulus is the ball, whose experiencer is Sue, and which is occurring in a certain way. It thus delivers an adverbial account of visual experience, one that has the resources to better deal with problems that are traditionally thought to be decisive against adverbial accounts. (shrink)

Over recent decades, public participation in technology assessment has spread internationally as an attempt to overcome or prevent societal conflicts over controversial technologies. One outcome of this new surge in public consultation initiatives has been the increased use of participatory consensus conferences in a number of countries. Existing evaluations of consensus conferences tend to focus on the modes of organization, as well as the outcomes, both procedural and substantial, of the conferences they examine. Such evaluations seem to rest on the (...) assumption that this type of procedure has universally agreed goals and meanings, and that therefore consensus conferences can readily be interpreted and applied across national boundaries. This article challenges this approach to consensus conferences. The core of the article is a study of national differences in ideas about what constitutes legitimate goals for participatory arrangements. The study looks at three consensus conferences on GMOs, which took place in France, Norway, and Denmark. Drawing on this study, the article discusses the ways in which interpretations of the concept of participation; the value attributed to lay knowledge vs. technical expertise; as well as ideas about the role of the layperson, are all questions that prompt entirely different answers from country to country. Further, the article analyses these national differences within a theoretical framework of notions of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

Researchers should be made co-responsible for the wider consequences of their research focus and the application of their findings. This paper describes a meta-reflection procedure that can be used as a tool to enhance scientific responsibility and reflective practice. The point of departure is that scientific practice is situated in power relations, has direction and, consequently, power implications. The contextual preconditions and implications of research should be stated and discussed openly. The reflection method aims at revealing both upstream elements, such (...) as for instance preconceptions, and downstream elements, for example, public consequences of research. The validity of research might improve from such discussions. Validity should preferably be understood as a broader concept than the methodological concerns in science. (shrink)

Growing evidence suggests that natural environments – whether in outdoor or indoor settings – foster psychological health and physiological relaxation, indicated by increased wellbeing, reduced stress levels, and increased parasympathetic activity. Greater insight into differential psychological aspects modulating psychophysiological responses to nature-based relaxation videos could help understand modes of action and develop personalized relaxation interventions. We investigated heart rate variability as an indicator of autonomic regulation, specifically parasympathetic activity, in response to a 10-min video intervention in two consecutive studies as (...) well as heart rate. We hypothesized that a nature-based relaxation video elicits HRV increase and HR decrease, with response magnitude being affected by aspects of early life adversity and trait mindfulness. In Study 1, N = 60 participants watched a relaxation video intervention depicting different natural scenery. We analyzed changes in HR and respiratory sinus arrhythmia as a standard HRV measure, both based on 3-min segments from the experimental session, in multiple growth curve models. We found a decrease in HR and increase of RSA during the video intervention. Higher paternal care and lower trait mindfulness observing skills were associated with higher RSA values before but not during video exposure. In Study 2, N = 90 participants were assigned to three video conditions: natural scenery from Study 1, meditation video, or short clip from “The Lord of the Rings.” Again, HR decreased, and RSA increased during video segments, yet without expected group differences across different video types. We found higher parental care and lower parental overprotection to predict higher RSA at different times during the experiment. Interestingly, lower paternal overprotection predicted overall higher RSA. These results suggest a generic relaxation effect of video interventions on autonomic regulation that we discuss in light of different theories mapping restorative effects of natural environments. Further, psychological characteristics like aspects of early life adversity and trait mindfulness could contribute to individual differences in autonomic regulation. This study contributes to a better understanding of autonomic and psychological responses to relaxation videos. (shrink)

Solidarity means standing with others: expressing support in times of stress and working together toward shared goals. As Saunkeah and colleagues note, solidarity also incorp...

A gendered reading of the liberal peacebuilding and transitional justice project in Bosnia–Herzegovina raises critical questions concerning the quality of the peace one hopes to achieve in transitional societies. By focusing on three-gendered justice gaps—the accountability, acknowledgement, and reparations gaps—this article examines structural constraints for women to engage in shaping and implementing transitional justice, and unmasks transitional justice as a site for the long-term construction of the gendered post-conflict order. Thus, the gendered dynamics of peacebuilding and transitional justice have produced (...) a post-conflict order characterized by gendered peace and justice gaps. Yet, we conclude that women are doing justice within the Bosnian–Herzegovina transitional justice project, and that their presence and participation is complex, multilayered, and constrained yet critical. (shrink)

A gendered reading of the liberal peacebuilding and transitional justice project in Bosnia–Herzegovina raises critical questions concerning the quality of the peace one hopes to achieve in transitional societies. By focusing on three-gendered justice gaps—the accountability, acknowledgement, and reparations gaps—this article examines structural constraints for women to engage in shaping and implementing transitional justice, and unmasks transitional justice as a site for the long-term construction of the gendered post-conflict order. Thus, the gendered dynamics of peacebuilding and transitional justice have produced (...) a post-conflict order characterized by gendered peace and justice gaps. Yet, we conclude that women are doing justice within the Bosnian–Herzegovina transitional justice project, and that their presence and participation is complex, multilayered, and constrained yet critical. (shrink)

A proof of the consistency of Heyting arithmetic formulated in natural deduction is given. The proof is a reduction procedure for derivations of falsity and a vector assignment, such that each reduction reduces the vector. By an interpretation of the expressions of the vectors as ordinals each derivation of falsity is assigned an ordinal less than ε 0, thus proving termination of the procedure.

This article analyses problem situations in the context of anaesthesia care. It considers what it means for nurse anaesthetists to be in problematic situations in the anaesthesia care of older patients. Benner’s interpretive phenomenological approach proved useful for this purpose. Paradigm cases are used to aid the analysis of individual nurses’ experiences. Thirty narrated problematic anaesthesia care situations derived from seven interviews were studied. These show that experienced nurse anaesthetists perceive anaesthesia care as problematic and highly demanding when involving older (...) patients. To be in problematic anaesthesia care situations means becoming morally distressed, which arises from the experience or from being prevented from acting according to one’s legal and moral duty of care. An important issue that emerged from this study was the need for an ethical forum to discuss and articulate moral issues, so that moral stress of the kind experienced by these nurse anaesthetists can be dealt with and hopefully reduced. (shrink)

Michael Smith attempts to solve the moral problem by arguing that our moral beliefs constitute a rational constraint on our desires. In particular, Smith defends the ‘practicality requirement’, which says that rational agents who believe that an action is right must have some desire to perform that action. We clarify and examine Smith’s argument. We argue that, for the argument to be sound, it must make two crucial assumptions about the rational agent in question: that facts about her desires are (...) transparent to her, and that she believes that she is rational. We conclude that if Smith has solved the moral problem then he has done so only for a restricted class of subjects—those who satisfy these two assumptions. (shrink)

Gödel’s ontological proof is by now well known based on the 1970 version, written in Gödel’s own hand, and Scott’s version of the proof. In this article new manuscript sources found in Gödel’s Nachlass are presented. Three versions of Gödel’s ontological proof have been transcribed, and completed from context as true to Gödel’s notes as possible. The discussion in this article is based on these new sources and reveals Gödel’s early intentions of a liberal comprehension principle for the higher order (...) modal logic, an explicit use of second-order Barcan schemas, as well as seemingly defining a rigidity condition for the system. None of these aspects occurs explicitly in the later 1970 version, and therefore they have long been in focus of the debate on Gödel’s ontological proof. (shrink)

In this study, we investigate the three-dot sign as a discourse marker (DM) with textual, subjective and intersubjective discourse functions. As a graphical marker that is used across languages, the three-dot sign is especially suitable for comparative studies and dynamics in language contact. Our corpus study targeting instant messages of different languages (English, German, Greek, Russian, Turkish) and speaker groups (monolinguals and bilingual heritage speakers) suggests that graphical DMs are prone to cross-linguistic influence. This depends on the specific contact situation (...) and does not seem to be a general effect of bilingualism. The societal status of a language might further influence the use of such markers in digital informal writing. Language-specific developments that relate to emerging functions indicate that functional versatility promotes frequent use of (graphical) DMs. (shrink)

We propose that leaders play a more important role in voters’ party sympathy in proportional representation systems than previous research has suggested. Voters, from the 2018 Swedish General Election, were in an experiment asked to describe leaders and parties with three indicative keywords. Statistical models were conducted on these text data to predict their vote choice. The results show that despite that the voters vote for a party, the descriptions of leaders predicted vote choice to a similar extent as descriptions (...) of parties. However, the order of the questions mattered, so that the first questions were more predictive than the second question. These analyses indicate that voters tend to conflate characteristics of leaders with their parties during election campaigns, and that leaders are a more important aspect of voting under PR than previous literature has suggested. Overall, this suggests that statistical analysis of words sheds new light of underlying sympathies related to voting. (shrink)

This paper gives a Gentzen-style proof of the consistency of Heyting arithmetic in an intuitionistic sequent calculus with explicit rules of weakening, contraction and cut. The reductions of the proof, which transform derivations of a contradiction into less complex derivations, are based on a method for direct cut-elimination without the use of multicut. This method treats contractions by tracing up from contracted cut formulas to the places in the derivation where each occurrence was first introduced. Thereby, Gentzen’s heightline argument, which (...) introduces additional cuts on contracted compound cut formulas, is avoided. To show termination of the reduction procedure an ordinal assignment based on techniques of Howard for Gödel’s T is used. (shrink)

This article examines the potential implications of the implementation of artificial intelligence in health care for both its delivery and the medical profession. To this end, the first section explores the basic features of AI and the yet theoretical concept of autonomous AI followed by an overview of current and developing AI applications. Against this background, the second section discusses the transforming roles of physicians and changes in the patient–physician relationship that could be a consequence of gradual expansion of AI (...) in health care. Subsequently, an examination of the responsibilities physicians should assume in this process is explored. The third section describes conceivable practical and ethical challenges that implementation of a single all-encompassing AI healthcare system would pose. The fourth section presents arguments for regulation of AI in health care to ensure that these applications do not violate basic ethical principles and that human control of AI will be preserved in the future. In the final section, fundamental components of a moral framework from which such regulation may be derived are brought forward, and some possible strategies for building a moral framework are discussed. (shrink)

This article explores the ethics of world heritage (WH) through a cosmopolitan lens. It proposes that cosmopolitanism provides fertile ground for the study of WH, in particular if combined with sensitivity to distinct indigenous ethical and political claims. Underpinning my article is the question of whether the politics of WH, despite its peaceful and universalist intensions, obscures local disputes and subaltern voices. The empirical emphasis is placed on the WH site of Laponia in the North of Sweden – a location (...) of Sami indigenous communities and commercial mining interests. I provide a narrative analysis of the inconsistencies between the Swedish ‘good state’ narrative defined by support for human and indigenous rights globally and the protection ambition of WH and its generally favourable attitude towards mining, despite its potentially damaging effects on the WH site of Laponia and the cultural heritage and land rights of Sami people living there. My study also provides an analysis of Sami narratives on Laponia – storylines that are rarely included in the Swedish ‘good state’ narrative. The study seeks to contribute to scholarly understandings of indigenous peoples’ ability to lay claims to the cosmopolitan protection logic that prevails in WH. (shrink)

The contributions to Testing Scientific Theories are unified by an in-terest in responding to criticisms directed by Glymour against existing models of confirmation—chiefly H-D and Bayesian schemas—and in assessing and correcting the "bootstrap" model of confirmation that he proposed as an alternative in Theory and Evidence (1980). As such, they provide a representative sample of objections to Glymour's model and of the wide range of new initiatives in thinking about scientific confirmation that it has influenced. The effect is a sense (...) of engagement and focus, and of significant advance at least in articulation of the problems that require solution; as Earman observes, "it is . . . heartening to report that the various opposing camps learned from each other" (p. vi).' In what follows I am concerned to assess what has been learned both critically, about Glymour's model, and constructively about the resources of the alternatives he challenges. My thesis is that while the theories emerging in this debate do deal with a wider range of scientific practice than before, their remaining limitations raise important questions about the ambitions and criteria of adequacy that have traditionally governed philosophical inquiry in this area. (shrink)