This article discusses the ethical and methodological issues associated with boredom experienced by human participants during psychological experiments. Ways are suggested in which informed consent, briefing, and debriefing can be used to prevent or remedy boredom induced during experiments. We address methodological and ethical concerns, and we discuss the advantages of the proposed approach for experimenters' practice and training of undergraduate students. Future directions for much needed research on these topics are also emphasized.

For at least 50 years science fiction’s dangerousness has sprung largely from its leaps into the transgressive. But something has now changed; the biggest problem today for anyone trying to create dangerous science fiction is that in the developed countries we now live largely in a libertarian, post-transgressive culture. There is, however, at least one target for science fiction that grows increasingly dangerous; the border between scarcity and post-scarcity. This danger is perhaps best realized in the great Mars trilogy by (...) Kim Stanley Robinson, which not only imagines a bridge from our current scarcity-based culture to a post-scarcity culture, but also shows people building this very bridge up from the foundations of our life today. Perhaps more dangerously, he then follows Marcuse and Mumford in envisioning not only an end to the economic problem of poverty but also to the social, anthropological and psychical forces of scarcity, showing step-by-step the dramatic changes in psychology, values and lives that post-scarcity would bring. And so, like certain tales by Plato and Tolstoy, it is a ‘threshing tale’, a tale that forces us into an imaginative confrontation with our current values, intending to winnow the false from the true. This epic sets out to alter the way we see ourselves and our social sphere, hoping – like William Blake – that altering the eye alters all; perhaps nothing but such a plausible, non-utopian and social vision of life in post-scarcity can be truly dangerous to the way we now think, love, work and war. (shrink)

Dan Zahavi has questioned whether the use of a transcendental phenomenological epoché is essential for phenomenological psychology. He criticizes the views of Amedeo Giorgi by asserting that Husserl did not view the transcendental reduction as needed for an entrance into phenomenological psychology and that, if one thinks so, phenomenological psychology would be in danger of being absorbed within transcendental phenomenology. Thirdly, rather than envisioning transcendental phenomenology as a purification for phenomenological psychology, Zahavi recommends a dialogue between transcendental phenomenologists and (...) psychologists. However, the two disciplines are closer for Husserl who also conceives phenomenological psychology as a self-standing science, and Giorgi is not as rigid on the necessity of transcendental phenomenology for phenomenological psychology. Alfred Schutz, following Husserl’s “Nachwort,” develops his own distinctive phenomenological psychology that appreciates disciplinary convergences and respects boundaries, while also articulating a wider understanding of epoché as an anthropological fact operative beyond the limits of transcendental phenomenology. (shrink)

La Dictio 17 (= 239 Vogel) di Ennodio è una controuersia in cui il declamatore si scaglia contro un figlio che non ha provveduto al mantenimento del padre anziano tanto da provocarne la morte. L’argomentazione è rafforzata da esempi di animali, aquile e lupi, che, a differenza dell’accusato, si prendono cura dei genitori. Nell’esempio delle aquile è sfruttato un tema ampiamente diffuso nella tradizione esegetica biblica; in particolare, Ennodio dimostra strette consonanze con la versione di questo motivo che si legge (...) in Paolino di Nola (Carm. 24 Hartel). Più oscuro rimane l’esempio dei lupi che in genere sono contraddistinti da ferocia e rapacità, mentre in Ennodio dimostrano una singolare benevolenza verso i genitori. Anche in questo caso si propongono alcuni precedenti biblici che possono aver influenzato la loro caratterizzazione positiva nella controuersia ennodiana. Una lettura della Dictio 17 in chiave soltanto allegorica è da evitare, ma la scelta di questi esempi animali, connotati in modo fortemente cristiano, permette di pensare a un’interpretazione su più livelli, retorico, morale e spirituale. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 19 Heft: 1 Seiten: 203-238.

The use of rights based arguments to justify claims that donor offspring should have access to information identifying their gamete donor has become increasingly widespread. In this paper, I do not intend to revisit the debate about the validity of such rights. Rather, the purpose is to examine the way that such alleged rights have been implemented by those legislatures that have allowed access to identifying information. I will argue that serious inconsistencies exist between the claim that donor offspring have (...) a right to know the identity of their gamete donor and the way such a right is currently met in practice. I hope to show that in systems where non‐anonymous donation is practised, an understanding of the proclaimed right of donor offspring to know their genetic identity is one composed of two different rights – the right to know the circumstances of their conception and the right to information identifying the gamete donor – can provide important insights into this important area of public policy. (shrink)

This Chapter aims to present a very preliminary exploration of the role and functioning of some ‘leading ideas’ that represent the most consistent attempts to balance freedom of scientific research with the need to protect participants and the community as a whole. To this end, we searched two databases, a scientific and a legal one, for some keywords (Freedom of research, Precautionary principle, Risk-based approach, Responsible research and innovation), to check the consistency of their presence and evolution over time. Without (...) aiming to in-depth investigate the precise connotations of each term and the context in which they are used from time to time, the core idea is to provide a very first quantitative exploration, which lays the foundations for further future investigation. (shrink)

Discusses the phenomenological foundations for qualitative research in psychology which operates out of the intersection of phenomenological philosophy, science, and psychology; challenges long-standing assumptions about the practice of grounding the science of psychology in empiricism and asserts that the broader philosophy of phenomenological theory of science permits more adequate psychological development"--Provided by publisher.

This article points out the criteria necessary in order for a qualitative scientific method to qualify itself as phenomenological in a descriptive Husserlian sense. One would have to employ description within the attitude of the phenomenological reduction, and seek the most invariant meanings for a context. The results of this analysis are used to critique an article by Klein and Westcott , that presents a typology of the development of the phenomenological psychological method.

The author explains that his background was in experimental psychology but that he wanted to study the whole person and not fragmented psychological processes. He also desired a non-reductionistic method for studying humans. Fortunately he came across the work of Edmund Husserl and discovered in the latter’s thought a way of researching humans that met the criteria he was seeking. Eventually he developed a phenomenological method for researching humans in a psychological way based upon the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. (...) This article briefly describes the method. (shrink)

Nel contesto della presente crisi climatica ed ambientale, istituzioni pubbliche e private promuovono la costruzione di ‘infrastrutture viventi’. L’articolo analizza l’economia biopolitica che caratterizza questi progetti, concentrandosi sull’infrastrutturalizzazione del pioppo: un genus botanico ampiamente utilizzato come ‘barriera contro la desertificazione’, ‘struttura di fitorisanamento’, e ‘pozzo di assorbimento di anidride carbonica’. Questi progetti mobilizzano il metabolismo della cellula vivente, dando forma a nuove reti di potere bio-infrastrutturale ed elaborate strategie di accumulazione del capitale.