Our claim in this paper is that not being identified as the data source might cause harm to a person or group. Therefore, in some cases the default of anonymisation should be replaced by a careful deliberation, together with research subjects, of how to handle the issues of identification and confidentiality. Our prime example in this article is community participatory research and similar endeavours on indigenous groups. The theme, content and aim of the research, and the question of how to (...) handle property rights and ownership of research results, as well as who should be in charge of the research process, including the process of creating anonymity, should all be answered, before anonymity is accepted. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse how the risks associated with research on transgenic plants are regulated in Sweden. The paper outlines the way in which pilot projects in the plant sciences are overseen in Sweden, and discusses the international and national background to the current regulatory system. The historical, and hitherto unexplored, reasons for the evolution of current administrative and legislative procedures in plant science are of particular interest. Specifically, we discuss similarities and differences in the regulation of medicine and (...) plant science, and we examine the tendency towards dichotomizing risk — focusing on social/ethical risks in medicine and biological risks in plant science. The context of this article is the Synpraxia research project, an inter-disciplinary program combining expertise in sciences and the humanities. (shrink)

The litmus test for the development of a metarepresentational Theory of Mind is the false belief task in which children have to represent how another agent misrepresents the world. Children typically start mastering this task around age four. Recently, however, a puzzling finding has emerged: Once children master the FB task, they begin to fail true belief control tasks. Pragmatic accounts assume that the TB task is pragmatically confusing because it poses a trivial academic test question about a rational agent’s (...) perspective; and we do not normally engage in such discourse about subjective mental perspectives unless there is at least the possibility of error or deviance. The lack of such an obvious possibility in the TB task implicates that there might be some hidden perspective difference and thus makes the task confusing. In the present study, we test the pragmatic account by administering to 3- to 6-year-olds TB and FB tasks and structurally analogous true and false sign tasks. The belief and sign tasks are matched in terms of representational and metarepresentational complexity; the crucial difference is that TS tasks do not implicate an alternative non-mental perspective and should thus be less pragmatically confusing than TB tasks. The results show parallel and correlated development in FB and FS tasks, replicate the puzzling performance pattern in TB tasks, but show no trace of this in TS tasks. Taken together, these results speak in favor of the pragmatic performance account. (shrink)

BackgroundThe SARS-COVID-19 pandemic and its associated disease control restrictions have in multiple ways affected families with young children, who may be especially vulnerable to mental health problems. Studies report an increase in perinatal parental distress as well as symptoms of anxiety or depression in children during the pandemic. Currently, little is known about the impact of the pandemic on infants and their development. Infant regulatory problems have been identified as early indicators of child socio-emotional development, strongly associated with maternal mental (...) health and the early parent–infant interaction. Our study investigates whether early parenthood under COVID-19 is associated with more maternal depressive symptoms and with a perception of their infants as having more RPs regarding crying/fussing, sleeping, or eating, compared to mothers assessed before the pandemic.MethodsAs part of a longitudinal study, 65 women who had given birth during the first nationwide disease control restrictions in Northern Germany, were surveyed at 7 months postpartum and compared to 97 women assessed before the pandemic. RPs and on maternal depressive symptoms were assessed by maternal report. Number of previous children, infant negative emotionality, and perceived social support were assessed as control variables.ResultsCompared to the control cohort, infants born during the COVID-19 pandemic and those of mothers with higher depressive symptoms were perceived as having more sleeping and crying, but not more eating problems. Regression-based analyses showed no additional moderating effect of parenthood under COVID-19 on the association of depressive symptoms with RPs. Infant negative emotionality was positively, and number of previous children was negatively associated with RPs.LimitationsDue to the small sample size and cross-sectional assessment, the possibility for more complex multivariate analysis was limited. The use of parent-report questionnaires to assess infant RPs can support but not replace clinical diagnosis.ConclusionsThe pandemic conditions affecting everyday life may have a long-term influence on impaired infant self- and maternal co-regulation and on maternal mental health. This should be addressed in peripartum and pediatric care. Qualitative and longitudinal studies focusing on long-term parental and infant outcomes under ongoing pandemic conditions are encouraged. (shrink)

This qualitative study examines the relevance of self-determination theory to explain retention and attrition in community supported agriculture (CSA). Using a focus group study of CSA members, we examined whether belonging to a CSA supports basic psychological needs for autonomy, competency and relatedness. We found that it did for continuing members. However, for those who did not renew, membership reduced their sense of autonomy, competency, and relatedness. For continuing members, the intensity of their involvement did not affect their needs satisfaction, (...) though it did influence how those needs were met. Continuing CSA members were also intrinsically motivated and internalized extrinsic motivations. (shrink)

Precision medicine (PM) and genomics are increasingly scrutinized through the lens of health inequities. This is a welcome development for a field that, while concerned with health-related differen...

The scenario could not have been more grim. Mrs. Carr had been fitted with a breathing tube for surgery, but the doctors were unable to wean her from the ventilator due to recurrent episodes of life‐threatening infection. She could not eat because of the ventilator, so she received nutrition through a tube in her stomach. At some point, her kidneys shut down and she started dialysis treatments. Between recurrent infection and dialysis, her blood pressure bottomed out, and the medical team (...) frequently jump‐started her heart with intravenous adrenaline‐type medications. Without aggressive support of her lungs, kidneys, nutrition, and cardiovascular system, Mrs. Carr would be dead. “What is going on here?” Anna wondered aloud. “Is this life?” Philosopher and physician Jeffrey Bishop might argue that this is not life. Rather, medicine has created a body in perpetual motion. Contemporary medicine, he contends, has redefined human life as human function; doctors simply replace the broken or dead parts of the human machine with other machines—a ventilator for the lungs, dialysis for the kidneys, and so forth—and the body stays in motion indefinitely. Bishop argues that the discipline of medicine needs to reexamine its metaphysical assumptions—its current approach is detrimental to human flourishing. Should a metaphysics of efficient causation be replaced with a more expansive metaphysics of final causes? (shrink)

'Reading Theophrastus's Mind: Marsilio Ficino's Reception of Priscian of Lydia', in The Neoplatonists and Their Heirs: Christians, Jews, and Muslims, ed. by E. Anagnostou and K. Parry, Brill 2023, pp. 417-1438 This article has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Grant agreement 795792.

'Reading Theophrastus's Mind: Marsilio Ficino's Reception of Priscian of Lydia', in The Neoplatonists and Their Heirs: Christians, Jews, and Muslims, ed. by E. Anagnostou and K. Parry, Brill 2023, pp. 417-1438 This article has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Grant Agreement 795792.

Well–being, health and freedom are some of the many phenomena of interest to science whose definitions rely on a normative standard. Empirical generalizations about them thus present a special case of value-ladenness. I propose the notion of a ‘mixed claim’ to denote such generalizations. Against the prevailing wisdom, I argue that we should not seek to eliminate them from science. Rather, we need to develop principles for their legitimate use. Philosophers of science have already reconciled values with objectivity in several (...) ways, but none of the existing proposals are suitable for mixed claims. Using the example of the science of well-being, I articulate a conception of objectivity for this science and for mixed claims in general. _1_ Introduction _2_ What Are Mixed Claims? _3_ Mixed Claims Are Different _3.1_ Values as reasons to pursue science _3.2_ Values as agenda-setters _3.3_ Values as ethical constraints on research protocols _3.4_ Values as arbiters between underdetermined theories _3.5_ Values as determinants of standards of confirmation _3.6_ Values as sources of wishful thinking and fraud _4_ Mixed Claims Should Stay _4.1_ Against Nagel _5_ The Dangers of Mixed Claims _6_ The Existing Accounts of Objectivity _6.1_ The perils of impartiality _7_ Objectivity for Mixed Claims _8_ Three Rules _8.1_ Unearth the value presuppositions in methods and measures _8.2_ Check if value presuppositions are invariant to disagreements _8.3_ Consult the relevant parties _9_ Conclusion. (shrink)

Ellie Anderson had always known that she wanted to have children. Her mother, Louise, was aware of this wish. Ellie was designated male at birth, but according to news sources, identified as a girl from the age of three. She was hoping to undergo gender reassignment surgery at 18, but died unexpectedly at only 16, leaving Louise grappling not only with the grief of losing her daughter, but with a complex legal problem. Ellie had had her sperm frozen before starting (...) hormone treatment, specifically so that she would retain the chance of becoming a parent after her gender reassignment. Ellie had considered what might happen to the sperm if she died and was adamant that her children should be brought into the world. She made her mother promise to ensure that this would happen. But according to UK law, Ellie’s mother has no legal right to retain her sperm, or to use it to fulfil Ellie’s wishes. In this paper, we raise several key ethical questions on this case, namely: does a refusal to bring Ellie’s children into the world wrong her posthumously? Is Ellie’s mother morally entitled to use her daughter’s sperm as Ellie wished? Should the fact that Ellie was a minor at the time of her death or the fact that she was transgendered undermine her wish to have children? Can Ellie become a parent posthumously? We consider how these complex ethical questions could be approached. (shrink)

Richard Bradley and others endorse Reverse Bayesianism as the way to model awareness growth. I raise a problem for Reverse Bayesianism—at least for the general version that Bradley endorses—and argue that there is no plausible way to restrict the principle that will give us the right results. To get the right results, we need to pay attention to the attitudes that agents have towards propositions of which they are unaware. This raises more general questions about how awareness growth should be (...) modelled. (shrink)

This book defends an account of justice to nonhuman beings – i.e., to animals, plants etc. – also known as ecological or interspecies justice, and which lies in the intersection of environmental political theory and environmental ethics. More specifically, against the background of the current extinction crisis this book defends a global non-ranking biocentric theory of distributive ecological/interspecies justice to wild nonhuman beings, because the extinction crisis does not only need practical solutions, but also an account of how it is (...) the outcome of large-scale injustice. This book not only provides a novel theoretical framework that supports such a claim, but it also develops the theoretical tools to find just compromises between the entitlements of intraspecies and intra-human global distributive justice to ecological space for the purpose of working towards a vision of just conservation. -/- Content: 1. Introducing Ecological Justice 2. Political Non-Ranking Biocentrism 3. The Community of Justice 4. The Currency of Distributive Justice 5. The Principles of Distributive Justice 6. Ecological Justice and the Capabilities Approach 7. Biodiversity Loss: An Injustice? 8. Who Owns the Earth? 9. Visions of Just Conservation 10. Outlook for Implementation . (shrink)

Partial lying denotes the cases where we partially believe something to be false but nevertheless assert it with the intent to deceive the addressee. We investigate how the severity of partial lying may be determined and how partial lies can be classified. We also study how much epistemic damage an agent suffers depending on the level of trust that she invests in the liar and the severity of the lies she is told. Our analysis is based on the results from (...) exploratory computer simulations of an arguably rational Bayesian agent who is trying to determine how biased a coin is while observing the coin tosses and listening to a liar’s misleading predictions about the outcomes. Our results provide an interesting testable hypothesis at the intersection of epistemology and ethics, namely that in the longer term partial lies lead to more epistemic damage than outright lies. (shrink)

This article studies an illuminated manuscript of St. Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos: Vat. lat. 451 (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). The manuscript was commissioned by the bishop Giovanni Capogallo, when he was in Lombardy in close contact with the court of the duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The article examines the cultural milieu of Pavia in the early 15th century, highlighting the role of the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine in the monastery of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro. (...) The two incipit pages ff. 1r and 239r, illuminated by Michelino da Besozzo, are an example of the International Gothic style and this article analyses not only their stylistic aspect, but also their allegorical meaning, as an interesting case of decoration of a patristic text. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with Catherine Malabou’s reading of Heidegger’s forgotten triad of change; indeed, in connection to her own notion of the ‘plasticity of meaning’. The paper focuses on the emergence of meaning, on its figuration, and on the moment during which a new image of meaning comes to be seen. In light of this pursuit, the paper will attest to change and to the plasticity of meaning through different images; the first being the plasticity of reading; the second, (...) the plasticity of metaphysics; and third, the plasticity of the ‘motor scheme’ – and especially that of writing. All these cases will be tied together through the notion of the fantastic; namely, through that which instantiates the figuration of meaning, its formation into an image and its visibility. After considering these plastic instances – and revealing some unimagined aspects of the fantastic, like the process of material-metaphoricity, I will relate the plasticity of meaning to the notion of childhood and to the ways through which this notion can be reconfigured. (shrink)

This special issue aims to spotlight the individual, lived experiences of caregivers and those receiving care–areas often overshadowed by clinical and medicalized narratives within clinical ethics. Our aim is to enrich the discourse by incorporating stories and narratives of medical care and challenge existing clinical practices by emphasizing patient and practitioner experiences. Through a blend of clinical and academic insights, this issue provides phenomenological narratives, highlighting the importance of lived experiences in understanding and improving clinical caregiving practices. The contributions, ranging (...) from theoretical analyses to personal narratives, explore various aspects of caregiving. Each article contributes to a deeper understanding of the phenomenologies of care, advocating for a more inclusive, patient-centered approach in clinical ethics and practice. (shrink)

Background: Ethics and dignity in prehospital emergency care are important due to vulnerability and suffering. Patients can lose control of their body and encounter unfamiliar faces in an emergency situation. Objective: To describe what specialist ambulance nurse students experienced as preserved and humiliated dignity in prehospital emergency care. Research design: The study had a qualitative approach. Method: Data were collected by Flanagan’s critical incident technique. The participants were 26 specialist ambulance nurse students who described two critical incidents of preserved and (...) humiliated dignity, from prehospital emergency care. Data consist of 52 critical incidents and were analyzed with interpretive content analysis. Ethical considerations: The study followed the ethical principles in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings: The result showed how human dignity in prehospital emergency care can be preserved by the ambulance nurse being there for the patient. The ambulance nurses meet the patient in the patient’s world and make professional decisions. The ambulance nurse respects the patient’s will and protects the patient’s body from the gaze of others. Humiliated dignity was described through the ambulance nurse abandoning the patient and by healthcare professionals failing, disrespecting, and ignoring the patient. Discussion: It is a unique situation when a nurse meets a patient face to face in a critical life or death moment. The discussion describes courage and the ethical vision to see another human. Conclusion: Dignity was preserved when the ambulance nurse showed respect and protected the patient in prehospital emergency care. The ambulance nurse students’ ethical obligation results in the courage to see when a patient’s dignity is in jeopardy of being humiliated. Humiliated dignity occurs when patients are ignored and left unprotected. This ethical dilemma affects the ambulance nurse students badly due to the fact that the morals and attitudes of ambulance nurses are reflected in their actions toward the patient. (shrink)

The author argues that the so-called “basic emotions”, such as happiness, fear or anger, are in fact cultural artifacts of the English language, just as the Ilongot concept of liget, or the Ifaluk concept of song, are the cultural artifacts of Ilongot and Ifaluk. It is therefore as inappropriate to talk about human emotions in general in terms of happiness, fear, or anger as it would be to talk about them in terms of liget or song. However, this does not (...) mean that we cannot penetrate into the emotional world of speakers of languages other than our own. Nor does it mean that there cannot be any universal human emotions. Universality of emotions is an open issue which requires further investigation. For this further investigation to be fully productive, it has to be undertaken from a universal, language and culture-independent perspective; and it has to be carried out in a universalist framework that is language and culture-independent. The author proposes for this purpose the “natural semantic metalanguage” based on universal (or near-universal) semantic primitives (or near-primitives), developed over two decades by herself and colleagues, and she argues that the use of this metalanguage facilitates such a perspective and offers such a framework. (shrink)

Anna Alexandrova on value judgements and the measurement of well-being.

Standard notions in philosophy of mind have a tendency to characterize socio-cognitive abilities as if they were unique to sophisticated human beings. However, assuming that it is likely that we are soon going to share a large part of our social lives with various kinds of artificial agents, it is important to develop a conceptual framework providing notions that are able to account for various types of social agents. Recent minimal approaches to socio-cognitive abilities such as mindreading and commitment present (...) a promising starting point from which one can expand the field of application not only to infants and non-human animals but also to artificial agents. Developing a minimal approach to the socio-cognitive ability of acting jointly, I present a foundation for future discussions about the question of how our conception of sociality can be expanded to artificial agents. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory has grown into one of the most frequent approaches to organizational sustainability. Stakeholder research has provided considerable insight on organization–nature relations, and advanced approaches that consider the intrinsic value of nonhuman nature. However, nonhuman nature is typically approached as an ambiguous, unified entity. Taking nonhumans adequately into account requires greater detail for both grounding the status of nonhumans and particularizing nonhuman entities as a set of potential organizational stakeholders with different characteristics, vulnerabilities, and needs. We utilize the philosophical (...) concept of ‘recognition’ to provide a normative underpinning for stakeholder theorizing on nonhuman nature in both universal and difference-sensitive terms. We discuss how the status model of recognition helps identify relevant nonhumans as organizational stakeholders, establish respect, and particularize nonhumans in their distinctiveness and in partner-like ways. The implications of the recognition approach for stakeholder research are explicated with an illustrative case that exemplifies the recognition and particularization of nonhuman nature. We contribute to stakeholder research on nonhuman nature by suggesting that recognition provides a conceptual tool for theorizing the stakeholder status and particularization of nonhuman nature. Thereby, this article reduces anthropocentric bias and increases the capacity of stakeholder theorizing to confront the challenges of the ecological crisis. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic impacted the lives of children and adolescents, leading to many changes in their routines, especially in education. Face-to-face physical education classes during COVID-19 were affected in organization, possibly conditioning students' participation, motivation, and learning. In the extreme conditions of the coronavirus, it may be assumed that daily physical activity became much less than before, partly because students are learning outside the school environment and PE lessons taught using remote forms do not fulfill their purpose. The aim (...) of the study was to assess the pupil's perception of inclusion in school education during the remote learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and to compare the results with the control group. Moreover, the physical activity of respondents during social isolation due to the coronavirus was examined. The sample consisted of 111 pupils of both genders, aged 14–21 years. The Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire was used to measure the perception of inclusion in school education. The structure of the participants' physical activity was examined using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Long Form for adolescents. It was observed that the pupils' gender did not differentiate their perception of inclusion in school education. It was proved that respondents participating in research during the COVID-19 pandemic obtained statistically significantly lower results in the case of “emotional wellbeing in school” but a higher mean was observed in relation to “social relationships with other pupils” than the control group. Girls achieved a higher mean in the case of walk Metabolic Equivalent of Task than boys. In addition, it was observed that the recommendation of vigorous physical activities was achieved by 37.78% of boys and 34.85% of girls. In turn, 69.70% of female pupils and 77.78% of male respondents met the recommendations for medium physical activities. It was also noted that 87.88% of girls and 86.67% of boys participating in the research achieved the recommendation for total physical activities. The analysis showed negligible and low positive correlations between examined variables. (shrink)

The extremely extensive philosophical legacy of Roman Witold Ingarden, a student of Edmund Husserl, including papers in the fields of ontology, epistemology, and aesthetics, has been consistently arousing the interest of researchers from around the world for several decades. The year 2020 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Ingarden’s death. The present book constitutes a unique contribution honoring the philosopher’s memory and academic legacy. An ambitious project that brings together the thoughts of many intellectuals, the book includes research problems, contemporary interpretations (...) of Ingarden’s thought, and comparative studies, placing his philosophy in a broader historical and cultural context. This approach perfectly reflects the relevance, refinement, and depth of Ingarden’s theories. Although the essays presented in the book undoubtedly constitute a due tribute to an important figure in contemporary philosophy, this collection is not exclusively retrospective, but also shows the present and future development of philosophical thought inspired by Ingarden’s works. Including a substantial introduction by the editors, the book contains eight chapters from some of the most significant scholars in the field, covering the historical and comparative approach to Ingarden’s thought, as well as from young, ambitious scholars developing new interpretations of selected aspects of Ingarden’s theories. Specifically, the reader will find chapters on existential ontology (Peter Simons, Jan Woleński), Ingarden’s theory of questions (Giuditta Corbella), music ontology (Edward Świderski), empathy and aesthetic experience (Jeff Mitscherling), the aesthetics of computer games (Matthew Gladden), aesthetic attention (Harri Mäcklin), and Ingarden’s theory and aesthetics of time (Charlene Elsby). (shrink)

Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk has a place among the early Kantians in Halle as both a theologian and a philosophical thinker. After situating Tieftrunk within this intellectual history and determining his theological and philosophical position, this paper provides a chronological account of the concept of hope—which lies at the basis of Kant’s moral philosophy—in Tieftrunk’s writings on philosophy of religion. In particular, the discussion centers on the relationship between the foundation of hope in the moral law and the exclusion of a (...) legalistic fulfilment of hope. The “love of the law,” which emerges especially in Tieftrunk’s work, takes a prominent position in the interpretation. The investigation is accompanied by an evaluation of Tieftrunk’s role in the early reception of Kant. (shrink)

In this article, we deal with the intelligible world of the angels in the Areopagetic tradition and we compose references found in the De divinis nominibus to form, as far as possible, a complete definition of them. This systematic approach to the Areopagetic corpus takes into consideration Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s text and George Pachymeres’ Paraphrasis of this treatise. We also offer a methodological proposal on how we can structure theoretically general concepts that refer to objective realities, which however cannot be (...) proved by the tools of formal Logic. (shrink)

In this paper, I revisit Kimberlé Crenshaw's argument in “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” (1989) to recover a companion metaphor that has been largely forgotten in the “mainstreaming” of intersectionality in (white-dominated) feminist theory. In addition to the now-famous intersection metaphor, Crenshaw offers the basement metaphor to show how—by privileging monistic, mutually exclusive, and analogically constituted categories of “race” and “sex” tethered, respectively, to masculinity and whiteness—antidiscrimination law functions to reproduce social hierarchy, rather than to remedy it, denying (...) Black women plaintiffs legal redress. I argue that in leaving the basement behind, deployments of “intersectionality” that deracinate the concept from its origins in Black feminist thought also occlude Crenshaw's account of the socio-legal reproduction of hierarchical power. (shrink)

This study belongs to the ethnomethodological tradition of identifying the everyday practices accounting for the oiled machinery of social organization and applies this approach to understanding direction light usage. We observe a set of episodes videorecorded in North-East Italy in the urban traffic. We first unpack the meaning of direction light usage from a pragmatic perspective and then test our interpretation against the cases in our collection that seem to deviate from it. We argue that direction lights’ usage works as (...) an announcement to some road users and a request to a subset of them; in both cases, direction lights convey contextualized (indexical) coordinates about the vehicle’s prospective trajectory. We then explain the cases in which signaling is omitted and draw some implications for traffic coordination and safety. (shrink)

Representing two generations of counselor education and practice, Megan Anna Neff and Mark McMinn provide practitioners with a fresh look at integration in a postmodern world. Modeling how to engage hard questions, they consider how different theological views, gendered perspectives, and cultures integrate with psychology and counseling.

If only implicitly, social anthropology has long incorporated joint attention as a research technique employed in what anthropologists call “the field”. This paper outlines the crucial role joint attention plays in anthropolgical fieldwork—specifically in Participant Observation—and advances the position that joint attention is a goal rather than a starting point of fieldwork practice. Exploring how anthropologists tentatively use attention as a methodological tool to understand other people’s lifeworlds, this paper draws parallels between Participant Observation and ordinary everyday interactions, thus teasing (...) out a view of _joint_ attention as a goal to be reached only by means of knowing what matters to others in the context of the lifeworld they inhabit. (shrink)

Almaatouq et al. propose an integrative experiment design space combined with large samples for scientific advancement. We argue recent innovative designs combining closed-loop experiment designs and Bayesian optimisation allow for integrative experiments at an individual level during a single session, circumventing the necessity for large samples. This method can be applied across disciplines, including developmental and clinical research.

Students’ cheating is a serious problem: It undermines the chance to adequately promote, support, and evaluate them. To explain cheating behavior, research seldom focuses on perceived teachers’ characteristics. Thus, we investigate the relationship between students’ cheating behavior and an important teacher characteristic, individual reference norm orientation. We examined cheating on written exams, on homework, and in oral exams among N = 601 students in N = 31 language classes. Results from doubly manifest multi-level analyses showed that, on the classroom level, (...) cheating on written exams and on homework occurred less frequently the more the classroom of students perceived their teachers as having an IRNO. We found no further evidence for other cheating factors or student characteristics. This supports the idea that teacher characteristics are associated with some forms of students’ cheating behavior. (shrink)

Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) present profound challenges for law. These challenges stem from law’s anthropocentrism, which is often left unspoken. This essay examines both the epistemic and normative dimensions of anthropocentrism within German Law, with a focus on Private Law. It defends the proposition that law’s anthropocentrism does not inherently oppose the idea of granting AI some form of legal capacity. Rather, so the essay argues, it is essentially a question of regulatory prudence to determine (...) the conditions and criteria under which the law should grant a legal status, legal capacity, or partial legal capacity to AI entities. Nonetheless, it is crucial to acknowledge that the core principles of private law as well as questions of liability for fault and negligence are rooted in human agency and cannot be directly applied to AI. It will be argued that the legal discourse on the recognition of AI is to be understood as a fundamentally political discourse. The political dimension of that discourse will be analyzed through the lens of the political theories of Hannah Arendt and Jaques Rancière, among others. (shrink)