In the netherworld of the bond market, down is up, bad is good, and every investor needs a tour guide.

In the netherworld of the bond market, down is up, bad is good, and every investor needs a tour guide.

Neuroscience communication is increasingly taking place on multidirectional social media platforms, creating new opportunities but also calling for critical ethical considerations. Twitter, one of the most popular social media applications in the world, is a leading platform for the dissemination of all information types, including emerging areas of neuroscience such as optogenetics, a technique aimed at the control of specific neurons. Since its discovery in 2005, optogenetics has been featured in the public eye and discussed extensively on social media, but (...) little is known about how this new technique is portrayed and who the users participating in the conversation are. To address this gap, we conducted content analysis of a sample of 1000 tweets mentioning “optogenetics” over a one-year period between 2014 and 2015. We found that academic researchers are the largest group contributing to the conversation, that the tweets often contain links to third-party websites from news organizations and peer-reviewed journals, and that common thematic motifs include the applications of optogenetics specifically for the control of brain activity and the treatment of disease. We also found that the majority of the tweets are neutral in their tone regarding optogenetics. As Twitter serves as a current and dynamic forum for exchange about advances in neuroscience, the conversation about optogenetics on this engaging platform can inform socially-responsive knowledge dissemination efforts in this area. (shrink)

There have been two recent strands of argument arguing for the pro tanto impermissibility of fully autonomous weapon systems. On Sparrow's view, AWS are impermissible because they generate a morally problematic ‘responsibility gap’. According to Purves et al., AWS are impermissible because moral reasoning is not codifiable and because AWS are incapable of acting for the ‘right’ reasons. I contend that these arguments are flawed and that AWS are not morally problematic in principle. Specifically, I contend that these arguments presuppose (...) an incoherent conception of an AWS as somehow making genuine decisions but not being morally responsible for those very same decisions. Rather than conceiving of AWS in this way, I argue that an AWS is either a socially-constructed institution that has been physically instantiated or it is a genuine agent. If it is the former, then we should treat AWS as we do any other collective action problem. If it is the latter, then we should treat AWS as responsibility-bearers, but also as bearers of rights and/or interests. To reject this disjunction is not only conceptually incoherent but also potentially morally dangerous. (shrink)

Are contemporary soldiers exploited by the state and society that they defend? More specifically, have America's professional service members disproportionately carried the moral weight of America's war-fighting decisions since the inception of an all-volunteer force? In this volume, Michael J. Robillard and Bradley J. Strawser, who have both served in the military, examine the question of whether and how American soldiers have been exploited in this way. Robillard and Strawser offer an original normative theory of 'moral exploitation'--the notion (...) that persons or groups can be wrongfully exploited by being made to shoulder an excessive amount of moral weight. They make the case that this exploitation accurately describes the relationship between the United States and the members of its military, and offer a thorough and in-depth analysis of some of the exploitative and misleading elements of present-day military recruitment, the moral burdens soldiers often bear, and the stifling effect that a 'Thank You for Your Service' and 'I support the troops' culture has had on serious public engagement about America's ongoing wars. Robillard and Strawser offer a piercing critique of the pernicious divide between military members and the civilians who direct them. They conclude by arguing for several normative and prudential prescriptions to help close this ever-widening fissure between the U.S. and its military, and within the U.S. itself. In so doing, their work gives a much needed and urgent voice to America's soldiers, the other 1%. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe profession of arms is distinct from other professions for many reasons. One reason which is not so obvious is that, unlike members of other professions, soldiers may go their entire careers preparing for a day that never arrives. All things considered, we should think this to be a very good thing. For soldiers, however, this can feel somewhat odd, since there is a natural desire to want to feel useful and to see one’s role and purpose find realization. Accordingly, (...) the common soldier is forced to adopt a rather paradoxical mindset, one of longing for peace, and therefore for uselessness, while at the same time longing to be useful, which would entail that there be a war. This latter desire to be useful and to vindicate one’s identity as a soldier can sometimes take on an unhealthy life of its own. The pull of wanting too strongly to live up to a warrior identity, I argue, can sometimes skew a soldier’s ability to assess risk rationally. This article will therefore investigate how a soldier’s c... (shrink)

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;An' T...

Stronach and Allan state that the use of humor by the disabled is an attempt to reintegrate themselves back into a social surround. Seeing this assignment of a reintegration function as a bit too teleological, and given the absence of interactional data, the reviewer is critical of the authors' reliance on literary research and offers an alternative way to study humor in interaction.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;An' T...

Comment modéliser les phénomènes de cognition sociale de manière à en préserver les caractères sociaux? Les sciences cognitives sont souvent mises à contribution dans la recherche de modèles qui permettraient d'interpréter ces phénomènes autant sur le plan de leurs mécanismes que sur celui de leurs effets sur la socialité. Or les sciences cognitives ont ceci de particulier qu'elles sont pour une large part fondées sur un paradigme psychologique des fonctions cognitives. Et les sciences sociocognitives ont généralement tendance à emprunter aux (...) sciences cognitives leurs instruments et approches de la modélisation. Cela constitue un problème majeur, tant du point de vue des rapports de causalité entre événements sociaux ainsi étudiés que sur le plan de l'échelle d'analyse adoptée. Ce livre offre une réflexion générale sur la nature et le rôle des modèles dans les sciences sociales, sur laquelle est érigée une théorie de la cognition sociale. L'auteur y étudie les avantages et les problèmes épistémologiques que rencontrent les approches sociocognitives actuelles et propose quelques pistes qui, en abandonnant le recours aux modèles neuropsychologiques des sciences cognitives, visent à redonner aux catégories sociologiques une dimension cognitive qui leur convient. (shrink)

Manifesto for the recognition of the principle of linguistic and cultural diversity in language research Preamble Over the years, and for several decades now, higher education institutions have been gradually and increasingly urging teacher-researchers to increase their international visibility. It is normal for these teacher-researchers to participate in international debates in their disciplines. This is done during conferences and in the course of article writing, not for advertising purpo...

As concepts, communication and information are very closely related, but they also designate more than their usual conceptual meaning when they are called upon in social theories as well as in philosophical theories about the reality and the truth of social life; information and communication are then designating physical events or event like objects of the observable reality, which will be hereafter described as a procedural ontologization of information. Why do they have this role and how do they play it (...) in contemporary social sciences and philosophy of social sciences? This article questions the scientificity of these concepts in these theoretical contexts. It wants to propose a framework for an epistemology of communication and information that is critical about the cybernetician paradigm in the social sciences. It presents this paradigm’s main features: informational ontology and probabilistic sociality. It offers a critique of this paradigm’s epistemological and methodological pretensions. It finally exposes the basis of an alternative philosophical theory of communication that wants to support the thesis that the cybernetician paradigmatic communication theory is not scientifically productive; and that it cannot be used in social scientific theoretical contexts without being dramatically redesigned and reoriented towards new goals. (shrink)

Background: The research community has a mandate to discover effective treatments for neurodegenerative disorders. The ethics landscape surrounding this mandate is in a constant state of flux, and ongoing challenges place ever greater demands on investigators to be accountable to the public and to answer questions about the implications of their work for health care, society, and policy. Methods: We surveyed US-based investigators involved in neurodegenerative diseases research about how they value ethics-related issues, what motivates them to give consideration to (...) those issues, and the barriers to doing so. Using the NIH CRISP database we identified 1,034 researchers with relevant, active grants and invited them to complete an online questionnaire. We received 193 responses. We used exploratory factor analysis to transform individual survey questions into a smaller set of factors, and linear regression to understand the effect of key variables of interest on the factor scores. Results: Ethics-related issues clustered into two groups: research ethics and external influences. Heads of research groups viewed issues of research ethics to be more important than the other respondents. Concern about external influences was related to overall interest in ethics. Motivators clustered into five groups: ensuring public understanding, external forces, requirements, values, and press and public. Heads of research groups were more motivated to ensure public understanding of research than the other respondents. Barriers clustered into four groups: lack of resources, administrative burden, relevance to the research, and lack of interest. Perceived lack of ethics resources was a particular barrier for investigators working in drug discovery. Conclusions: The data suggest that senior level neuroscientists working in the field of neurodegeneration (ND), and drug discovery specifically, are motivated to consider ethics issues related to their work, but the perceived lack of ethics resources thwarts their efforts. With bioethics centres at more than 50% of the institutions at which these respondents reside, the neuroscience and bioethics communities appear to be disconnected. Dedicated ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) programs, such as those fully integrated into genetics and regenerative medicine, provide models for achieving meaningful partnerships not yet adequately realized for scholars and trainees interested in drug discovery for ND. (shrink)

Le titre du livre éveillera sans doute la curiosité du lecteur intéressé par la critique sociale au sens large du terme, un peu moins peut-être celle du lecteur motivé par une réflexion centrée sur les problématiques épistémologiques propres aux sciences sociales; toutefois, la lecture complète pourra peut-être satisfaire la curiosité du premier; quant à celle du second, cela reste à mesurer. Le livre entend attaquer l’économisme ambiant, dont la surestimation du marché comme étalon de mesure normative des institutions sociales constituerait (...) un problème moral autant qu’une illusion alimentée par un faux naturalisme réducteur. (shrink)

Ce livre, remarquable d’érudition, regroupe huit articles écrits entre 1990 et 1995, publiés dans différentes revues spécialisées durant la même période, et rassemblés en trois parties en raison des thèmes généraux qui s’en dégagent, soit l’épistémologie des sciences sociales, la théorie et l’analyse politique, et l’éthique. Vu l’espace restreint alloué ici, nous n’en présenterons que la thèse principale en tentant de mettre succinctement en relief quelques-unes de ses implications épistémologiques et méthodologiques.

This paper presents an attempt to integrate theories of causal processes—of the kind developed by Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe—into a theory of causal models using Bayesian networks. We suggest that arcs in causal models must correspond to possible causal processes. Moreover, we suggest that when processes are rendered physically impossible by what occurs on distinct paths, the original model must be restricted by removing the relevant arc. These two techniques suffice to explain cases of late preëmption and other cases (...) that have proved problematic for causal models. (shrink)

Michael Robillard and Bradley Strawser’s Outsourcing Duty: The Moral Exploitation of the American Soldier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022) is outstanding. The arguments in it are important, new, and powerful, and it is extremely well-written. It is accessibly written, including eye-opening personal stories (including the authors’ stories), an interesting array of economic and sociological studies, and colorful illustrative quotes from The Bourne Legacy, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Rudyard Kipling’s poem, Tommy. It also includes colorful-and-caustic comments on the Bush- (...) and Obama-administrations’ decisions regarding going to war and staying at war that nicely highlight what is at stake. In short, the book is a tour de force. (shrink)