In recent decades, the governance of food safety, food quality, on-farm environmental management and animal welfare has been shifting from the realm of ‘the government’ to that of the private sector. Corporate entities, especially the large supermarkets, have responded to neoliberal forms of governance and the resultant ‘hollowed-out’ state by instituting private standards for food, backed by processes of certification and policed through systems of third party auditing. Today’s food regime is one in which supermarkets impose ‘private standards’ along the (...) food supply chain to ensure compliance with a range of food safety goals—often above and beyond those prescribed by government. By examining regulatory governance in Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom we highlight emerging trajectories of food governance. We argue that the imposition of the new private forms of monitoring and compliance continue the project of agricultural restructuring that began with government support for structural adjustment schemes in agriculture and that these are most evident in the UK and Australia where neoliberalism is an entrenched philosophy. However, despite Norway’s identity as a social democracy, we also identify neoliberal ‘creep’ into the system of food governance. Small-scale producers in all three nations are finding themselves increasingly subject to governance through private, market-based mechanisms that, to varying degrees, are dominated by major supermarket chains. The result is agricultural restructuring not through the traditional avenues of elected governments, but via non-elected market operatives. (shrink)

It is often asserted that Newman was an invisible peritus at the Second Vatican Council—in a sense, Newman was a “Father of the Modern Church.” But what does it mean to be a “Father of the Church”? This article reflects on selected aspects of Newman’s thought that were influential at Vatican II and continue to be important today.

Fairness, the notion that people deserve or have rights to certain resources or kinds of treatment, is a fundamental dimension of moral cognition. Drawing on recent evidence from economics, psychology, and neuroscience, we ask whether self-interest is always intuitive, requiring self-control to override with reasoning-based fairness concerns, or whether fairness itself can be intuitive. While we find strong support for rejecting the notion that self-interest is always intuitive, the literature has reached conflicting conclusions about the neurocognitive systems underpinning fairness. We (...) propose that this disagreement can largely be resolved in light of an extended Social Heuristics Hypothesis. Divergent findings may be attributed to the interpretation of behavioral effects of ego depletion or neurostimulation, reverse inference from brain activity to the underlying psychological process, and insensitivity to social context and inter-individual differences. To better dissect the neurobiological basis of fairness, we outline how future research should embrace cross-disciplinary methods that combine psychological manipulations with neuroimaging, and that can probe inter-individual, and cultural heterogeneities. (shrink)

The editors, working with a team of 325 renowned authorities in the field of ethics, have revised, expanded, and updated this classic encyclopedia. Along with the addition of 150 new entries, all of the original articles have been newly peer-reviewed and revised, bibliographies have been updated throughout, and the overall design of the work has been enhanced for easier access to cross-references and other reference features. New entries include * Aristotelian Ethics * Avicenna * Bad Faith * Beneficence * (...) Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives * Cheating * Civil Liberty * Conventions * Dirty hands * Evolution * Fiduciary Relationships * Gay ethics * Genetic Engineering * Holocaust * Journalism * Killing/Letting Die * Moral Imagination * Narrative Ethics * Political correctness * Population Ethics * Public and 0rivate Morality * Racism, concepts of * and many more. (shrink)

Public policy on the development and use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has mainly been concerned with defining proper strategies of risk management. However, surveys and focus group interviews show that although lay people are concerned with risks, they also emphasize that genetic modification is ethically questionable in itself. Many people feel that this technology “tampers with nature” in an unacceptable manner. This is often identified as an objection to the crossing of species borders in producing transgenic organisms. Most scientists (...) reject these opinions as based on insufficient knowledge about biotechnology, the concept of species, and nature in general. Some recent projects of genetic modification aim to accommodate the above mentioned concerns by altering the expression of endogenous genes rather than introducing genes from other species. There can be good scientific reasons for this approach, in addition to strategic reasons related to greater public acceptability. But are there also moral reasons for choosing intragenic rather than transgenic modification? I suggest three interrelated moral reasons for giving priority to intragenic modification. First, we should respect the opinions of lay people even when their view is contrary to scientific consensus; they express an alternative world-view, not scientific ignorance. Second, staying within species borders by strengthening endogenous traits reduces the risks and scientific uncertainty. Third, we should show respect for nature as a complex system of laws and interconnections that we cannot fully control. The main moral reason for intragenic modification, in our view, is the need to respect the “otherness” of nature. (shrink)

Within the discipline of economics critical realism has thus far been advocated to a large extent through a sustained critique of the position of mainstream economics. This article questions these critical endeavours for their analytical shortcomings and suggests an alternative and more constructive approach for developing and arguing critical realism within economics. It is argued that the critique of mainstream economics is wanting due to the fact that it focuses on modes of inference rather than on questions of ontology and (...) that the scope of the analysis is too wide. The consequences of these shortcomings are considered for the future prospects of the critical realist project within economics. Drawing on advances made within the discipline of sociology, a somewhat different strategy is suggested for the task of arguing and developing critical realist approaches within the field of economics. The hallmark of this approach is advocacy of critical realism by way of substantive analyses of relevant questions and issues rather than by critical assessment of competing positions. As it happens, however, although the main focus of this approach is constructive rather than critical, a more fruitful and sustainable critique of mainstream economics and other schools of thought is part and parcel of these endeavours. The argument developed, moreover, indicates the prospects of cross-fertilisation between disciplines in which the critical realist project has now gained a foothold. (shrink)

There is a tendency in the business ethics literature to think of ethics in restrictive terms: what one should not do, and how to control this. Drawing on Lawrence Kohlberg''s theory of moral development, the paper focuses on, and draws attention to, another more positive aspect of ethics: the capacity of ethics to inspire and empower individuals, as well as groups. To understand and facilitate such empowerment, it is argued that it is necessary to move beyond Kohlberg''s justice reasoning (...) so as to appreciate the value and importance of feeling and care. Accordingly, we draw upon case study material to review the meaning of Kohlberg''s higher stages — 5, 6 and 7 — to question the meaning of ethical reasoning. With such deeper understanding of particular ethical codes or practices, it is thought that members of organisations may come closer to thespirit, as opposed to the letter, of ethical conduct in organisations. This, we argue, is consistent with the degree of trust and integrity demanded by leaner, post-bureaucratic ways of organizing and conducting business as well as being personally beneficial to the people involved. (shrink)

Selection pressure from health risk is hypothesized to have shaped adaptations motivating individuals to attempt to become valued by other individuals by generously and recurrently providing beneficial goods and/or services to them because this strategy encouraged beneficiaries to provide costly health care to their benefactors when the latter were sick or injured. Additionally, adaptations are hypothesized to have co-evolved that motivate individuals to attend to and value those who recurrently provide them with important benefits so they are willing in turn (...) to provide costly care when a valued person is disabled or in dire need. Individuals in egalitarian foraging bands can provide a number of valuable benefits, such as defense, diplomacy, food, healing, information, technical skill, or trading savvy. We therefore expect that humans have evolved psychological mechanisms motivating the pursuit and cultivation of a difficult-to-replace social role based on the provisioning of a benefit that confers a fitness advantage on its recipients. We call this phenomenon social niche specialization. One such niche that has been well-documented is meat-sharing. Here we present cross-cultural evidence that individuals cultivate two other niches, information and tool production, that serve (among other things) to buffer health risk. (shrink)

While most Akkadian dialects use two coordinators, a phrase and clause level u= and a clause level =ma, in the Neo-Assyrian period both are mostly missing from native Assyrian texts. Not only is lack of overt coordination exceptional among the Semitic languages, cross-linguistically asyndeton is a rare strategy, only attested in languages with no writing tradition. In this paper, we will concentrate on u=. We sketch the various environments where u= is no longer used in Neo-Assyrian and consider what (...) other strategies are used to mark coordination in this dialect. Finally, we propose a diachronic path to explain which processes contributed to the loss of the coordinator u=. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Tracing a Traumatic Temporality: Levinas and Derrida on Trauma and ResponsibilityCathrine Bjørnholt Michaelsen (bio)For more than three decades, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas develop their conceptions of trauma and responsibility in close, critical, and engaged readings of each other’s works.1 In a text first published in 1973, Levinas explicitly considers different aspects and implications of Derrida’s “new style of thought,” as well as his own relation to Derrida, describing (...) their recurring crossing of paths as “a contact at the heart of a chiasmus,” which is further said to constitute “the very modality of the philosophical encounter” (PN 56, 62).Since the publication of “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’” in 1990, in which Derrida makes the somewhat surprising announcement that justice can be considered the undeconstructible condition of deconstruction (AR 243), as well as the subsequent publication of Specters of Marx in 1993, which is often designated as the work in which Derrida begins to consider ethico-political concerns more explicitly than hitherto, there has been much scholarly discussion about a so-called “ethical turn” of deconstruction.2 Throughout [End Page 43] the 1990s and up until this day a tendency prevails among certain scholars to strive for the establishment and legitimization of a more or less harmonic accordance between Levinas and Derrida with reference to concepts that preoccupy them both (e.g., “justice,” “hospitality,” “the other,” or “responsibility”). However, as Martin Hägglund has convincingly argued, a certain disjoining of Derrida and Levinas is required in order not to conflate what ultimately amount to two very different styles of writing and thinking. Such disjoining is particularly important when it comes to an issue such as responsibility, which is too often and too quickly categorized as an “ethical issue,” as if such a categorization were self-explanatory.3The aim of this article is not to carry out a comparative study focusing on the similarities and dissimilarities of the writings of Derrida and Levinas. Instead, the article is an attempt to let a “third” voice arise from the ongoing philosophical conversation between Derrida and Levinas, which is neither entirely accordant nor discordant, in order to emphasize a certain traumatic temporality of responsibility that finds a space in both their works while indicating the subtle nuances of disjuncture separating these spaces. In what follows, I therefore wish to explore some of the most significant displacements to which the notions of trauma and responsibility are subjected throughout the writings of Derrida and Levinas, as a result, to some extent at least, of their repeated chiasmic encounters.By way of introduction, it should be noted that both Derrida and Levinas transport the notion of trauma away from its most frequent psychopathological, psychoanalytic, or neurological areas of interpretation, just as they transport the notion of responsibility away from its usual autonomist or decisionist connotations toward a more extensive space of signification.4 Bearing this introductory note in mind, the question concerning what precisely enables this transport of trauma will direct the approach of the article. In other words, the article will question what it is about the structure of “trauma” or “traumatism” that allows the somewhat “fearsome” generalizations—to employ [End Page 44] Derrida’s own formulation from “Typewriter Ribbon”5 —to take place in the writings of both Derrida and Levinas.The suggestion in what follows will be that it is the peculiar temporality of trauma that allows for the generalizations, openings, and disseminations of trauma in Derrida and Levinas. More specifically, this traumatic temporality inscribes itself through an interruption of what might, with a reference to Heidegger, be called the vulgar understanding of time.6 Drawing attention to the temporality of trauma as a vehicle of transportation, the article advances in six main sections, each exploring different aspects of the relationship between temporality, trauma, and responsibility displayed in Derrida and Levinas.Traumatic TemporalityAs is well known, at least since Freud, trauma only becomes a trauma belatedly, or after its own fact, since a trauma only manifests itself by withdrawing itself in the traces it leaves behind, that is, by its aftermath and its effects of repetition and deferral. Trauma is somehow... (shrink)

The late Jonathan Mann famously theorized that public health, ethics, and human rights are complementary fields motivated by the paramount value of human well-being. He felt that people could not be healthy if governments did not respect their rights and dignity as well as engage in health policies guided by sound ethical values. Nor could people have their rights and dignity if they were not healthy. Mann and his colleagues argued that public health and human rights are integrally connected: Human (...) rights violations adversely affect the community's health, coercive public health policies violate human rights, and advancement of human rights and public health reinforce one another. Despite the deep traditions in public health, ethics, and human rights, they have rarely cross-fertilized—although there exists an important emerging literature. For the most part, each of these fields has adopted its own terminology and forms of reasoning. Consequently, Mann advocated the creation of a code of public health ethics and the adoption of a vocabulary or taxonomy of “dignity violation”. (shrink)

The late Jonathan Mann famously theorized that public health, ethics, and human rights are complementary fields motivated by the paramount value of human well-being. He felt that people could not be healthy if governments did not respect their rights and dignity as well as engage in health policies guided by sound ethical values. Nor could people have their rights and dignity if they were not healthy. Mann and his colleagues argued that public health and human rights are integrally connected: Human (...) rights violations adversely affect the community's health, coercive public health policies violate human rights, and advancement of human rights and public health reinforce one another. Despite the deep traditions in public health, ethics, and human rights, they have rarely cross-fertilized—although there exists an important emerging literature. For the most part, each of these fields has adopted its own terminology and forms of reasoning. Consequently, Mann advocated the creation of a code of public health ethics and the adoption of a vocabulary or taxonomy of “dignity violation”. (shrink)

What are our constitutional possibilities? The importance of this question is illustrated by the striking breadth of recent discussions, ranging from the interpretation of the United States Constitution as a guarantee of fundamental economic equality and proposals to restore the lost constitution to arguments for the virtual abandonment of structural provisions of the Constitution of 1789. Such proposals are conventionally understood as placing constitutional options on the table as real options for constitutional change. Normative constitutional theory asks the question whether (...) these options are desirable - whether political actors (citizens, legislators, executives, or judges) should take action to bring about their plans for constitutional reform or revolution. Frequently, normative constitutional theories are criticized on the ground that they are undesirable, unwise, on inconsistent with the best theories of political morality and legitimate legal authority, but sometimes one hears a very different form of criticism, expressed in locutions such as the following: That is unrealistic. That's not possible. That is pie in the sky. You are imagining castles in the air. Your suggestion is utopian. That isn't feasible. These objections invoke the idea of ephemeral constitutional possibility - constitutional options that are not real or actual possibilities. What are our constitutional possibilities? How should we think about the feasible choice set for constitutional change? What are the differences between ideal and nonideal theory? What role should the ideas of path dependency and second best play in constitutional theory? These inquiries cross the lines between normative, positive, and conceptual constitutional theory. At the conceptual level, we can ask what phrases like constitutional possibility, ideal theory, and the feasible choice set mean. At the level of positive constitutional theory, we can ask about the forces and institutions that condition constitutional possibility. At the level of normative constitutional theory, we can ask about the implications of constitutional possibility for political morality. Constitutional Possibilities proceeds as follows. Part I introduces the idea of ephemeral constitutional possibilities. Part II will cobble together a conceptual toolkit for thinking about possibility and necessity in constitutional theory: the tools include: (a) the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory, (b) the notion of a constitutional second best, and (c) an introduction to possible-worlds semantics. Part III will explore the implications of the resulting proto-theory of constitutional possibility in two stages: stage one will investigate the normative implications, whereas stage two will reconnoiter a set of standards for making modal claims in constitutional arguments. Part IV provides a case study in constitutional possibility by examining Sanford Levinson's proposal for a constitutional convention. Part V concludes with the problem of false constitutional necessity. (shrink)

Objective: Previous research suggests a positive association between pain, depression and sleep. In this study, we investigate how sleep correlates with varying levels of pain and depression in nursing home patients with dementia.Materials and methods: Cross-sectional study with sleep-related data, derived from two multicenter studies conducted in Norway. We included NH patients with dementia according to the Mini-Mental State Examination from the COSMOS trial and the DEP.PAIN.DEM trial whose sleep was objectively measured with actigraphy. In the COSMOS trial, NH (...) patients were included if they were ≥65 years of age and with life expectancy >6 months. In the DEP.PAIN.DEM trial, patients were included if they were ≥60 years and if they had depression according to the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia. In both studies, pain was assessed with the Mobilization-Observation-Behavior-Intensity-Dementia-2 Pain Scale, and depression with CSDD. Sleep parameters were total sleep time, sleep efficiency, sleep onset latency, wake after sleep onset, early morning awakening, daytime total sleep time and time in bed. We registered use of sedatives, analgesics, opioids and antidepressants from patient health records and adjusted for these medications in the analyses.Results: Mean age was 86.2 years and 76.3% were female. Hierarchical regressions showed that pain was associated with higher TST and SE, less WASO and more DTS. More severe dementia was associated with more WASO and TiB. More severe depression was associated with less TST, less DTS and less TiB. Use of sedative medications was associated with less TiB.Conclusion: When sleep was measured with actigraphy, NH patients with dementia and pain slept more than patients without pain, in terms of higher total sleep time. Furthermore, their sleep efficiency was higher, indicating that the patients had more sleep within the time they spent in bed. Patients with more severe dementia spent more time awake during the time spent in bed. Furthermore, people with more severe depression slept less at daytime and had less total sleep time Controlling for concomitant medication use did not affect the obtained results. (shrink)

Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and their application within the field of mental health provision raise issues that cross social, economic, and philosophical boundaries. While Therapeutic A.I. promises to disrupt the current provision of mental health services to reach populations without access to adequate mental health care there are risks. This paper addresses the philosophical problems posed by Therapeutic A.I. I suggest that in the absence of legal guidelines there is a need for philosophical guidance that prioritizes the dignity (...) of clients/consumers. To that end, I advance Rosen’s concept of dignity-as-respectfulness as the most appropriate philosophical principle to guide the application of Therapeutic A.I. (shrink)

The editors, working with a team of 325 renowned authorities in the field of ethics, have revised, expanded and updated this classic encyclopedia. Along with the addition of 150 new entries, all of the original articles have been newly peer-reviewed and revised, bibliographies have been updated throughout, and the overall design of the work has been enhanced for easier access to cross-references and other reference features. New entries include * Cheating * Dirty hands * Gay ethics * Holocaust * (...) Journalism * Political correctness * and many more. (shrink)

The editors, working with a team of 325 renowned authorities in the field of ethics, have revised, expanded, and updated this classic encyclopedia. Along with the addition of 150 new entries, all of the original articles have been newly peer-reviewed and revised, bibliographies have been updated throughout, and the overall design of the work has been enhanced for easier access to cross-references and other reference features. New entries include * Aristotelian Ethics * Avicenna * Bad Faith * Beneficence * (...) Categorical (...). (shrink)

The genome editing technology CRISPR is described as a technological game-changer because of its flexibility and precision, and as an ethical game-changer due to its ability to engineer traits in living organisms without crossing species, avoiding a significant objection to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In salmon farming, applications of CRISPR in breeding hold the promise of handling environmental and fish welfare challenges yet require social acceptance. Adopting an empirical bioethics framework, this stakeholder interview study shows that respecting species borders is (...) important, but not decisive, for acceptance among Norwegian stakeholders. The main objections are based on moral reflections about technology use and outcomes. These reflections combine principles and pragmatic deliberations of moral costs and benefits, suggesting that CRISPR applications with environmentally and ethically significant benefits can be socially acceptable. This indicates that the game-changing potential of CRISPR relies on the characteristics of the editing and the context in which the application takes place. (shrink)

Efforts to promote ethical behaviour in business and academic contexts have raised awareness of the need for an ethical orientation in business students. This study examines the similarities and differences between the personal values of Iranian and Australian business students and their attitudes to cheating behaviour in universities and unethical practices in business settings. Exploratory factory analysis provided support for three distinct ethics factors—serious academic ethical misconduct, minor academic ethical misconduct, and business ethical misconduct. Results reveal statistically significant differences between (...) the two cultural groups for ethical (altruism/universalism) values, and for attitudes to serious academic misconduct. No differences were found between the two groups for attitudes to minor academic unethical practices or unethical business practices. Gender influenced responses where females were found to indicate higher levels of unacceptability of unethical practices in academic and business settings than males. This pilot study highlights the need for higher education institutions to develop and enforce policies and practices to publicise, encourage and reinforce higher awareness of the need for adhering to ethical behaviour in university studies as a necessary component of training business professionals. (shrink)

The Argument Web is maturing as both a platform built upon a synthesis of many contemporary theories of argumentation in philosophy and also as an ecosystem in which various applications and application components are contributed by different research groups around the world. It already hosts the largest publicly accessible corpora of argumentation and has the largest number of interoperable and cross compatible tools for the analysis, navigation and evaluation of arguments across a broad range of domains, languages and activity (...) types. Such interoperability is key in allowing innovative combinations of tool and data reuse that can further catalyse the development of the field of computational argumentation. The aim of this paper is to summarise the key foundations, the recent advances and the goals of the Argument Web, with a particular focus on demonstrating the relevance to, and roots in, philosophical argumentation theory. (shrink)

The advent of the new nanotechnologies has been heralded by government, media, and many in the scientific community as the next big thing. Within the agricultural sector research is underway on a wide variety of products ranging from distributed intelligence in orchards, to radio frequency identification devices, to animal diagnostics, to nanofiltered food products. But the nano-revolution (if indeed there is a revolution at all) appears to be taking a turn quite different from the biotechnology revolution of two decades ago. (...) Grappling with these issues will require abandoning both the exuberance of diffusion theory and ex post facto criticism of new technologies as well in favor of a more nuanced and proactive view that cross the fault line between the social and natural sciences. (shrink)

BackgroundEthics consult services are well established, but often remain underutilized. Our aim was to identify the barriers and perceptions of the Ethics consult service for physicians, advance practice providers (APPs), and nurses at our urban academic medical center which might contribute to underutilization.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional single-health system, anonymous written online survey, which was developed by the UCSD Health Clinical Ethics Committee and distributed by Survey Monkey. We compare responses between physicians, APPs, and nurses using standard parametric and non-parametric (...) statistical methods. Satisfaction with ethics consult and likelihood of calling Ethics service again were assessed using a 0–100 scale using a 5-likert response structured (0 being “not helpful at all” to 100 being “extremely helpful”) and results presented using box plots and interquartile ranges (IQR).ResultsFrom January to July 2019, approximately 3800 surveys were sent to all physicians, APPs and nurses with a return rate of 5.5—10%. Although the majority of respondents had encountered an ethical dilemma (85–92.1%) only approximately half had ever requested an Ethics consult. The primary reason for physicians never having requested a consult was that they never felt the need for help (41%). For APPs the primary reasons were not knowing an Ethics consult service was available (33.3%) or not knowing how to contact Ethics (27.8%). For nurses, it was not knowing how to contact the Ethics consult service (30.8%) or not feeling the need for help (26.2%). The median satisfaction score (IQR) for Ethics consult services rated on a 0–100 scale, from physicians was 76 (29), for AAPs 89 (49), and nurses 70 (40) (p = 0.62). The median (IQR) of likelihood of consulting Ethics in the future also on a 0–100 scale was 71 (47) for physicians, 69 (45) for APPs, and 61 (45) for nurses (p = 0.79). APP’s and nurses were significantly more likely than physicians to believe that the team did not act on the Ethics consult’s recommendations.ConclusionsBased on the results presented, we were able to identify actionable steps to better engage healthcare providers—and in particular APPs and nurses—and scale up institutional educational efforts to increase awareness of the role of the Ethics consult service at our institution. Actionable steps included implementing a system of ongoing feedback that is critical for the sustainability of the Ethics service role. We hope this project can serve as a blueprint for other hospital-based Ethics consult services to improve the quality of their programs. (shrink)

Background: The brief generic Multicultural Quality of Life Index is a culturally informed self-report 10-item questionnaire used to measure health-related quality of life. QoL is an important outcome measure in guiding healthcare and is held as a substantial parameter to evaluate the effectiveness of healthcare. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children might negatively influence the parents’ QoL. Having a validated questionnaire to measure QoL for this population will therefore be a vital first step in guiding healthcare for parents of children (...) with ADHD. We aimed to examine the reliability and validity of the Norwegian version of the MQLI in a sample of parents of children with ADHD.Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 128 parents of children with ADHD were recruited from four outpatient clinics within the Child and Adolescents Mental Health Services in Norway. They completed the MQLI along with an alternative well-being scale, the Five-item World Health Organization Well-being Index, and a form including demographic variables. Reliability and validity of the MQLI were examined. We conducted a factor analysis and calculated internal consistency and the correlation between the MQLI and the WHO-5.Results: Factor analysis of the parents reported MQLI yielded a one-factor solution. For the MQLI, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.73. The correlation between the two measures of MQLI and WHO-5 was high, reflecting convergent validity since the association between the two measures was strong.Conclusion: Results from this study support the reliability and validity of the Norwegian version of the MQLI for assessment of quality of life in parents of children with ADHD with good psychometric properties. Study findings support the use of the questionnaire in CAMHS. (shrink)

Recent accounts of “the biological” emphasize its thoroughgoing transformation. Accounts of biomedicalization, biotechnology, biopower, biocapital, and bioeconomy tend to agree that twentieth- and twenty-first-century life sciences transform the object of biology, the biological. Amidst so much transformation, we explore attempts to stabilize the biological through standards. We ask: how do standards handle the biological in transformation? Based on ethnographic research, the article discusses three contemporary postgenomic standards that classify, construct, or identify biological forms: the Barcoding of Life Initiative, the BioBricks (...) Assembly Standard, and the Proteomics Standards Initiative. We rely on recent critical analyses of standardization to suggest that any attempt to attribute a fixed property to the biological actually multiplies dependencies between values, materials, and human and nonhuman agents. We highlight ways in which these biological standards cross-validate life forms with forms of life such as publics, infrastructures, and forms of disciplinary compromise. Attempts to standardize the biological, we suggest, offer a good way to see how a life form is always also a form of life. (shrink)

Alexithymia, psychological distress, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are highly related constructs. The ongoing debate about the nature and relationship between these constructs is perpetuated by an overreliance on cross-sectional research. We examined the longitudinal interactive relationship between alexithymia, psychological distress, and PTSD. We hypothesised that there is an interactive relationship between the three constructs. Military personnel (N = 1871) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Kessler 10 and a PTSD Checklist (PCL-C) at pre-deployment, post-deployment, and at 3–4 years (...) following the post-deployment assessment. We initially tested whether psychological distress is either a moderator or mediator in the relationship between alexithymia and PTSD across the time points. General psychological distress was a partial mediator of total PTSD severity and hyperarousal symptomology at all three time points. Psychological distress fully mediated re-experiencing and avoidance symptomology at all three time points. Our results suggest that those with alexithymia are at longitudinal risk of developing more severe PTSD symptomology and experiencing hyperarousal irrespective of temporal proximity to traumatic exposure. Further, vulnerability to the emergence of re-experiencing and avoidance symptomology for those with alexithymia is increased when one experiences greater distress. Our results show that alexithymia is a persistent risk factor for PTSD symptomology. (shrink)

The aim of the SI is to bring to the fore the places in which cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) are formed; how place shapes the dynamics of CSPs, and how CSPs shape the specific settings in which they develop. The papers demonstrate that partnerships and place are intrinsically reciprocal: the morality and materiality inherent in places repeatedly reset the reference points for partners, trigger epiphanies, shift identities, and redistribute capacities to act. Place thus becomes generative of partnerships in the most (...) profound sense: by developing an awareness of their emplacement, CSPs commit to place, and through their place-based commitments produce three intertwined modalities of place-specific ethics that bind CSPs and place: ethic of recognition, an ethic of care, and an ethic of resilience. Our authors have found vivid examples of how emplaced CSPs embody these ethics, signaling hope for the sustainability of our (always hyper-local) life-worlds. (shrink)

Lawrence Anthony and Françoise Malby love animals-so when they hear that a herd of wild African elephants needs a new home, they welcome the herd to their wildlife sanctuary-Thula Thula-with open arms. What follows in this beautifully illustrated true story is an extraordinary cross-species friendship that will move readers and warm the hearts of animal lovers at every age.

This paper addresses the mereological problem of the unity of structured propositions. The problem is how to make multiple parts interact such that they form a whole that is ultimately related to truth and falsity. The solution I propose is based on a Platonist variant of procedural semantics. I think of procedures as abstract entities that detail a logical path from input to output. Procedures are modeled on a function/argument logic, but are not functions. Instead they are higher-order, fine-grained structures. (...) I identify propositions with particular kinds of molecular procedures containing multiple sub-procedures as parts. Procedures are among the basic entities of my ontology, while propositions are derived entities. The core of a structured proposition is the procedure of predication, which is an instance of the procedure of functional application. The main thesis I defend is that procedurally conceived propositions are their own unifiers detailing how their parts interact so as to form a unit. They are not unified by one of their constituents, e.g., a relation or a sub-procedure, on pain of regress. The relevant procedural semantics is Transparent Intensional Logic, a hyperintensional, typed λ-calculus, whose λ-terms express four different kinds of procedures. While demonstrating how the theory works, I place my solution in a wider historical and systematic context. (shrink)

Logical semantics includes once again structured meanings in its repertoire. The leading idea is that semantic and syntactic structure are more or less isomorphic. A key motive for reintroducing sensitivity to semantic structure is to obtain fine‐grained meanings, which are individuated more finely than in possible‐world semantics, namely up to necessary equivalence. Just getting the truth‐conditions right is deemed insufficient for a full semantic analysis of sentences. This paper surveys some of the most recent contributions to the program of structured (...) meaning, while providing historical background. I suggest that to make substantial advances the program needs to solve the problem of propositional unity and develop an intensional mereology of abstract objects. (shrink)

Aim of the paper is to present a new logic of technical malfunction. The need for this logic is motivated by a simple-sounding philosophical question: Is a malfunctioning corkscrew, which fails to uncork bottles, nonetheless a corkscrew? Or in general terms, is a malfunctioning F, which fails to do what Fs do, nonetheless an F? We argue that ‘malfunctioning’ denotes the modifier Malfunctioning rather than a property, and that the answer depends on whether Malfunctioning is subsective or privative. If subsective, (...) a malfunctioning F is an F; if privative, a malfunctioning F is not an F. An intensional logic is required to raise and answer the question, because modifiers operate directly on properties and not on sets or individuals. This new logic provides the formal tools to reason about technical malfunction by means of a logical analysis of the sentence “a is a malfunctioning F”. (shrink)

Theories of structured meanings are designed to generate fine-grained meanings, but they are also liable to overgenerate structures, thus drawing structural distinctions without a semantic difference. I recommend the proliferation of very fine-grained structures, so that we are able to draw any semantic distinctions we think we might need. But, in order to contain overgeneration, I argue we should insert some degree of individuation between logical equivalence and structural identity based on structural isomorphism. The idea amounts to forming an equivalence (...) class of different structures according to one or more formal criteria and designating a privileged element as a representative of all the elements, i.e., a first among equals. The proposed method helps us to a cluster of notions of co-hyperintensionality. As a test case, I consider a recent objection levelled against the act theory of structured propositions. I also respond to an objection against my methodology. (shrink)

We prove how to validly quantify into hyperpropositional contexts de dicto in Transparent Intensional Logic. Hyperpropositions are sentential meanings and attitude complements individuated more finely than up to logical equivalence. A hyperpropositional context de dicto is a context in which only co-hyperintensional propositions can be validly substituted. A de dicto attitude ascription is one that preserves the attributee’s perspective when one complement is substituted for another. Being an extensional logic of hyperintensions, Transparent Intensional Logic validates all the rules of extensional (...) logic, including existential quantification. Yet the rules become more exacting when applied to hyperintensional contexts. The rules apply to only some types of entities, because the existence of only some types of entities is entailed by a hyperpropositional attitude de dicto. The insight that the paper offers is how a particular logic of hyperintensions is capable of validating quantifying-in in a principled and rigorous manner. This result advances the community-wide understanding of how to logically manipulate hyperintensions. (shrink)

Quite unexpectedly, cognitive psychologists find their field intimately connected to a whole new intellectual landscape that had previously seemed remote, unfamiliar, and all but irrelevant. Yet the proliferating connections tying together the cognitive and evolutionary communities promise to transform both fields, with each supplying necessary principles, methods, and a species of rigor that the other lacks. (Cosmides and Tooby, 1994, p. 85).

The topic of this paper is the notion of technical (as opposed to biological) malfunction. It is shown how to form the property being a malfunctioning F from the property F and the property modifier malfunctioning (a mapping taking a property to a property). We present two interpretations of malfunctioning. Both interpretations agree that a malfunctioning F lacks the dispositional property of functioning as an F. However, its subsective interpretation entails that malfunctioning Fs are Fs, whereas its privative interpretation entails (...) that malfunctioning Fs are not Fs. We chart various of their respective logical consequences and discuss some of the philosophical implications of both interpretations. (shrink)

Twelve essays explore the philosophy of science in general and the physical sciences in particular A common theme unites all twelve essays: In discussing the ...

Soames's cognitive propositions are strings of acts to be performed by an agent, such as predicating a property of an individual. King takes these structured propositions to task for proliferating too easily. King's objection is based on an example that purports to show that three of Soames's propositions are really just one proposition. I translate the informally stated propositions King attributes to Soames into the intensional λ-calculus. It turns out that they are all β-equivalent to the proposition King claims Soames's (...) three propositions are identical to. I argue on philosophical grounds against identifying β-equivalent propositions. The reason is that β-conversion obliterates too many of the procedural distinctions that are central to an act-based theory such as Soames's and which are worth preserving. In fact, β-expansion allows the addition of a fifth proposition that highlights additional procedural distinctions and propositional structure. The welcome conclusion is that we have five procedurally distinct, if equivalent, propositions. (shrink)