The problem of measurement is often considered an inconsistency inside the quantum formalism. Many attempts to solve it have been made since the inception of quantum mechanics. The form of these attempts depends on the philosophical position that their authors endorse. I will review some of them and analyze their relevance. The phenomenon of decoherence is often presented as a solution lying inside the pure quantum formalism and not demanding any particular philosophical assumption. Nevertheless, a widely debated question is to (...) decide between two different interpretations. The first one is to consider that the decoherence process has the effect to actually project a superposed state into one of its classically interpretable component, hence doing the same job as the reduction postulate. For the second one, decoherence is only a way to show why no macroscopic superposed state can be observed, so explaining the classical appearance of the macroscopic world, while the quantum entanglement between the system, the apparatus and the environment never disappears. In this case, explaining why only one single definite outcome is observed remains to do. In this paper, I examine the arguments that have been given for and against both interpretations and defend a new position, the “Convivial Solipsism”, according to which the outcome that is observed is relative to the observer, different but in close parallel to the Everett’s interpretation and sharing also some similarities with Rovelli’s relational interpretation and Quantum Bayesianism. I also show how “Convivial Solipsism” can help getting a new standpoint about the EPR paradox providing a way out of the seemingly unavoidable non-locality of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Means–ends decoupling, the institutionally induced implementation of ineffective practices, has become increasingly common. Extant theory suggests that means–ends decoupling has real consequences, which makes it unstable and difficult for organizations to sustain. Yet little is known of how, and with what outcomes, firms organize such means–ends decoupling. We examine organizing via multiple qualitative and longitudinal case studies of how Swedish fast fashion retailers implement and manage the collection of used garments. We find that firms combine two organizational arrangements: structural and (...) temporal core–compartment separations, which mitigate consequences of means–ends decoupling by obscuring and justifying efficiency gaps. Thereby we provide a theoretical explanation for how means–ends decoupling can persist over time. (shrink)

Gleïzès, philosophe proche des Méditateurs et des dormeuses, avait écrit une épopée pionnière du mouvement végétarien se déroulant sur la Montagne noire dans le Sud-Ouest de la France. Ce livre en main, Louise Hervé et Clovis Maillet ont été à la rencontre des maraîchers et des végétarien·nes de la région en 2023, au lendemain d’une grande manifestation contre la construction de l’autoroute Toulouse-Castres. Leur cri de ralliement était : « Moins de bitume, plus de légumes ».

In a recent paper (Zwirn in Phys Essays 30: 3, 2017), I argued against backward in time effects used by several authors to explain delayed choice experiments. I gave an explanation showing that there is no physical influence propagating from the present to the past and modifying the state of the system at a time previous to the measurement. However, though the solution is straightforward in the case of delayed choice experiments involving only one particle, it is subtler in the (...) case of experiments involving two entangled particles because they give rise to EPR-like situations. Considering that a measurement is not an actual change of the physical state of a system and is relative to the observer allows to understand that there is neither backward in time effects nor instantaneous collapse of the second system when the first one is measured, as is often postulated. This allows also to get rid of any non-locality (Zwirn in Found Phys 50:1–26, 2020). In this paper, I want to go further into the consequences of this way of considering the measurement, that I have called Convivial Solipsism, and show that even if, in the usual sense, there is no physical effect of the present or of the future on the past, we must nevertheless consider that the observer’s past is sometimes not entirely determined and that it becomes determined only when certain measurements are done latter. This apparent contradiction disappears if one understand that each observer builds, through her own measurements, her own world (that I call the phenomenal world in Convivial Solipsism) which is different from what we are used to consider as the common world shared by everybody. (shrink)

L’attitude des historiens face à la mondialisation a été influencée depuis 1990 par les débats sur la globalisation. Celle-ci a permis, après l’histoire universelle européocentrique des années 1870-1970 et la World History des années 1960-1990, de développer des perspectives nouvelles marquées par les méthodes de l’histoire globale. Mais les résultats sont différents selon les sphères culturelles : en France et en Italie, on a privilégié l’histoire connectée ; en Allemagne et dans le monde anglo-saxon, on a insisté sur les processus (...) de globalisation ; en Russie et en Chine, on estime que la globalisation concerne le domaine économique mais non les dimensions politiques et culturelles locales qui restent en dehors du monde occidental. Enfin, les limites méthodologiques de l’histoire globale ont des conséquences sur les conceptions de la globalisation qu’on ne peut faire remonter trop loin dans le temps et amènent à concevoir une histoire de l’humanité qui dépasse celle de la seule mondialisation. (shrink)

Apres avoir reconnu la justesse du geste henryen, consistant à placer l’individu vivant au centre de son interprétation, c’est l’atomisation voire l’approche « nominaliste » du travail qui en découle qu’Hervé Touboul met vigoureusement en question, au fil d’une analyse approfondie de la manière dont M. Henry en viendrait à méconnaitre les dialectiques, toujours à l’œuvre dans le texte de Marx, de la quantité et de la qualité, ou de la valeur d’usage et de la valeur d’échange. L’auteur pense (...) décisif d’interroger la posture henryenne : la conception réductrice du travail – comme qualité pure et refus de l’objectivité, au nom de la subjectivité transcendantale. D’où la difficulté à aborder la socialité du travail – les médiations dont elle est tissée, son anonymat irréductible à toute inter-personnalité – et au-delà, à dégager les conditions de sa répétition proprement politique. (shrink)

Introduction Les femmes n'ont eu véritablement accès au pastorat dans les Églises protestantes françaises qu'en l966. Certes, une femme avait été consacrée en 1948, mais à condition de rester célibataire et sans enfants. Celles qui dans les années suivantes exercèrent exceptionnellement la fonction pastorale ne furent pas consacrées. L'accès des femmes au ministère féminin vient couronner de succès les efforts de plusieurs générations de partisans de l'égalité des sexes au sein du pro...

Résumé Beaucoup de cinéastes et de théoriciens français ont très longtemps clamé que le cinéma ne consistait pas à produire des images, mais des plans – catégorie adossée à la notion de durée et très vague, puisqu’elle désigne une découpe à la fois spatiale et temporelle. Cette réticence au concept d’image a ainsi nourri une sorte de « Yalta » cinéphile, distinguant la lignée des frères Lumière (la vue comme art du réel) et celle de Georges Méliès (le tableau fantasmagorique). (...) Cette opposition entre image (souvent assimilée, ici, à l’imagerie ou au cliché) et plan-durée peut être comparée à la fort ancienne querelle du dessin et de la couleur (ce qui cerne et ce qui déborde). Nous tenterons ici d’étudier l’éventualité d’un « icono-réalisme », en nous appuyant notamment sur les travaux de Gilles Deleuze et de Jacques Rancière (La Fable cinématographique), ainsi que sur un moyen-métrage de Pier Paolo Pasolini, La Ricotta (1963). (shrink)

En se replongeant dans les archives d’un mouvement artistique oublié, qui se réunissait au Louvre pour méditer sur les révolutions à apporter à l’art (celui des Méditateurs et des Dormeuses) nous faisons retour sur plusieurs cas de performances mises en scène dans ce musée. Les artistes questionnent le conservatisme des institutions, proposent de les perturber et de faire de ces perturbations des œuvres d’art.

Despite severe amnesia, some studies showed that Alzheimer Disease patients with moderate to severe dementia keep a consistent, but impoverished representation of themselves, showing preservation of the sense of identity even at severe stages of the illness. Some studies suggest that listening to music can facilitate the reminiscence of autobiographical memories and that stimulating autobiographical memory would be relevant to support the self of these patients. Consequently, we hypothesized that repeated participation to reminiscence workshops, using excerpts of familiar songs as (...) prompts would participate to the enrichment of autobiographical memories, self-representation and sense of identity. We included a group of 20 AD patients with severe dementia residing in nursing homes. Their performances were compared to a control group of 20 matched healthy residents living in the same institutions. The experiment was conducted in three phases over a 2-week period. On phase 1, an individual assessment of sense of identity was proposed to each participant. On phase 2, participants joined musical reminiscence workshops. During the third phase, individual evaluation of autobiographical memory and a second assessment of sense of identity were proposed. Our results showed that, despite their massive amnesia syndrome, autobiographical memories of AD reached at the end of the 2 weeks the number and quality of those of matched controls. Moreover, we confirmed a continuity of self-representation in AD patients with a stable profile of the answers between the first and second individual assessments of sense of identity. However, the increase in number and episodic quality of autobiographical memories was not accompanied by an enrichment of the sense of identity. In a complementary study, new patients participated in the same paradigm, but using movie extracts as prompts, and showed very similar effects. We discuss all of these results with regard to the literature showing the significant impact of repetition on the reactivation of memory traces even in very amnestic AD patients at severe stages of the disease. (shrink)

Tribe and State: The Dynamics of International Politics and the Reign of Zimri-Lim. By Adam E. Miglio. Gorgias Studies in the Ancient Near East, vol. 8. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2014. Pp. xvi + 271, maps. $95.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY NC ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. In Contentious Minds, Florence Passy and Gian-Andrea Monsch explain how cognitive and relational processes allow activists participate in and sustain their commitment to activism. Based on a wide array of survey and interview data with activists engaged in (...) protest, volunteering and unions, they highlight how a commitment community develop shared values, identities, and meanings through interaction. (shrink)

ArgumentRaspail’s domestic medicine method, popularized in 1840s France, has similarities with the practices of nineteenth century non-academic healers. His mass marketing of camphor as a universal treatment echoes the practices of “charlatans” and their circles. But Raspail is also very original in this history of popular care. As a scientist, a popularizer of encyclopedic knowledge and a political activist, he managed to blur traditional distinctions between science and politics and between popular and learned medicine. Raspail was a constant thorn in (...) the side of academic institutions and professional organizations, which were struggling to gain legitimacy. His work took a political turn when he combined, within a single project, his approach to treatment and his call for democratizing medical care. Raspail’s method challenged institutional norms by acknowledging the importance of the patient’s contribution to the healing process, and recognizing the necessity of thwarting the occasionally deleterious effects of monopolistic medicalization. (shrink)

The practice and development of modern medicine requires large amounts of data, particularly in the domain of cancer. The future of personalized medicine lies neither with “genomic medicine” nor with “precision medicine”, but with “data medicine”. The establishment of this DM has required far-reaching changes, to establish four essential elements connecting patients and doctors: biobanks, databases, bioinformatic platforms and genomic platforms. The “transformation” of scientific research areas, such as genetics, bioinformatics and biostatistics, into clinical specialties has generated a new vision (...) of care. Molecular tumor boards are one response to these changes and are now providing better access to next-generation sequencing and new cancer treatments to patients with inoperable or metastatic cancers, and those for whom the usual treatment has failed. However, MTB face a crucial ethical challenge: maintaining and improving the trust of patients, clinicians, researchers and industry in academic medical centers supported by private or public funding rather than providing genetic data directly to private companies. We believe that, in this era of DM, appropriate modern digital communication networks will be required to maintain this trust and to improve the organization and effectiveness of the system. There is, therefore, a need to reconsider the form and content of informed consent documents at all academic medical centers and to introduce dynamic and electronic informed consent. (shrink)

BackgroundAt the start of 2021, oncologists lacked the necessary scientific knowledge to adapt their clinical practices optimally when faced with cancer patients refusing or reluctant to be vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the marked vulnerability of these patients to severe, and even fatal forms of this new viral infectious disease. Oncologists at Foch Hospital were confronted with this phenomenon, which was observed worldwide, in both the general population and the population of cancer patients.MethodsBetween April and November 2021, the Ethics and Oncology (...) Departments of Foch Hospital decided to investigate this subject, through an empirical and interdisciplinary study in bioethics. Our scientific objective was to try to identify and resolve the principal bio-ethical issues, with a view to improving clinical practices in oncology during future major pandemics of this kind, from a highly specific bio-ethical standpoint. We used a mainly qualitative methodological approach based on questionnaires and interviews.ResultsIn April 2021, 29 cancer patients refused or were reluctant to be vaccinated. Seventeen of these patients said that making vaccination mandatory would have helped them to accept vaccination. In October 2021, only 10 cancer patients continued to maintain their refusal. One of the main reasons for the decrease in refusals was probably the introduction of the “pass sanitaire” in July 2021, which rendered vaccination indispensable for many activities. However, even this was not sufficient to convince these 10 cancer patients.ConclusionWe identified a key bio-ethical issue, which we then tried to resolve: vaccination policy. We characterized a major tension between “the recommendation of anti-COVID-19 vaccination” and “free will”, and the duty to “protect each other”. Mandatory vaccination, at least in France, could resolve this tension, with positive effects on quality of life, or survival, in cancer patients initially refusing or reluctant to be vaccinated, but only if collective and individual scales are clearly distinguished. (shrink)

Our position is critical of the dominant method in psychology, and critical of the social use of psychological models. We assert that the scientific approach in psychology must break with modernist claim, but without sinking into post-modernist relativism. We consider that the epistemology associated with experimental psychology should be a specific epistemology associated with the particular objects studied. By calling on pragmatism and realism, psychology can find the resources to use quantitative studies as an action deployed within a complex, interactive (...) and dynamic social space, and thus break with its normative practice and function. (shrink)

Ce dossier porte sur une thématique qui n’a pas encore été abordée centralement dans la revue et qui l’est de manière dispersée en sociologie politique autour de problématiques distinctes que l’on se propose ici de rapprocher. Partant d’une conception large de la notion de démocratie comme se rapportant à un ensemble d’activités fondées simultanément sur la souveraineté populaire et l’État de droit et spécifiquement dédiées au gouvernement de la société, deux dimensions doivent être soulignées. D’une part, ces activités se déploient (...) dans des institutions particulières, soit des organes de l’État (parlement, gouvernement, tribunaux) dans lesquels s’exerce un pouvoir de décision susceptible d’orienter l’action publique menée dans l’ensemble de la société. D’autre part, elles s’inscrivent dans une compétition réglée, dont l’enjeu est précisément la conquête des pouvoirs d’État que détiennent ces autorités politiques. Comme tel, l’espace politique démocratique manifeste une ambivalence... (shrink)

Cette thèse de doctorat se propose de reprendre l'ensemble de la philosophie pratique de Kant en aval, c'est-à-dire à partir de l'ouvrage chronologiquement tardif dans le corpus kantien, "La religion dans les limites de la simple raison" (1793), dont la première partie assigne à la volonté un défi : le "mal radical". Le "mal radical" n'est pas le mal absolu ou diabolique, mais il consiste en une inversion (Verkehrtheit) de l'ordre des principes au sein du vouloir, et ne peut être (...) déraciné que par l'entière conversion du coeur. Avec le mal, s'ouvre l'antinomie du judaïsme, considéré par le philosophe comme le contre-modèle de la foi par excellence, et du christianisme, criterium unique et anhistorique de la religion, seul à même de résoudre le problème de l'homme nouveau. Si, selon Kant, le judaïsme est nouménalement nul parce qu'incapable de véhiculer le contenu de la religion rationnelle, le philosophe, qui considère l'interdit biblique de l'idolâtrie comme "le commandement le plus sublime du Livre de loi des Juifs", lui reconnaît néanmoins le mérite de mettre l'accent sur le respect. Le christianisme, quant à lui, met l'accent sur l'amour, dont Kant retient la signification pratique, à savoir qu'il est l'état de perfection de l'intention vers lequel nous devons tendre. (shrink)

Trust is a key ingredient of business activities. Scams are spectacular betrayals of trust. When the victim is a powerful organization that does not look vulnerable at first sight, we can suspect that this organization has developed an excessive trust, or over-trust. In this article, we take over-trust as the result of the intentional production of gullibility by the scammer. The analysis of a historically famous scam case, the Elf “Great Sniffer Hoax,” suggests that the victim is made gullible by (...) the scammer through a range of seduction and protection maneuvers that prevent the victim from developing doubts and suspicions. An integrated framework of the production of gullibility in organizations is proposed in order to further our understanding of over-trust. We discuss how these insights might be extended, beyond the case of scams, to more ordinary contexts of business activities. (shrink)

Florence Larocque et Anne-Marie Reynaud.

Lorsqu'en 1843 Marx commente la philosophie du droit de Hegel il ne commente que le chapitre final sur l’État. Curieusement le chapitre dont on pourra dire après coup, lisant l'ensemble de l'œuvre de Marx, qu'il était le plus proche de lui n'est pas commenté. La raison de cela peut être parfaitement contingente, manque de temps à l'époque où il met en marche cette critique de Hegel et aussi plus tard. Dans la préface aux Manuscrits de 1844 il met en avant (...) la lourdeur qu'un tel travail critiqu... (shrink)

By attending to how people speak about their gender, we can find diverse answers to the question of what it is like to have a gender identity. To some, it is little more than having a body whereas others may report it as more attitudinal or dispositional—seemingly contradictory views. In this paper, I seek to reconcile these disparate answers by developing a theory of how individual gender identity comes about. In the simplest possible terms, I propose that gender identity is (...) how we make sense of our gender subjectivity, the totality of our gendered experiences of ourselves. Gender identity is constituted by gender subjectivity, but this constitutive relationship is underdetermined. While gender subjectivity may narrow the range of inhabitable gender identities, it is always compatible with more than one. To arrive at a gender identity, we arrange gender subjectivity like building materials. My theory helps us understand how different people offer seemingly incompatible accounts of their gender identity without questioning their authenticity or validity. They simply arrange similar building materials differently. (shrink)

Eigenfeatures are created by the principal component approach (PCA) used on objects described by a low-level code (i.e., pixels, Gabor jets). We suggest that eigenfeatures act like the flexible features described by Schyns et al. They are particularly suited for face processing and give rise to class-specific effects such as the other-race effect. The PCA approach can be modified to accommodate top-down constraints.

En faisant du sujet de droit la prémisse anthropologique de la société, la modernité bouleverse la nature de l’intérêt général qui se mesure désormais à l’aune des aspirations individuelles. L’intérêt général est moins un principe qu’une notion relationnelle, qui articule, par le moyen du contrat, la composition des droits et des intérêts particuliers. Pourtant, la réciprocité initiale entre le droit et l’intérêt débouche sur une tension contrariant le projet de composer un intérêt général apte à les satisfaire également. L’étude conjointe (...) de deux auteurs, Thomas Hobbes et John Locke, permet de saisir que la priorité accordée à l’un des deux pôles, le droit et l’intérêt, aboutit à des pensées politiques radicalement divergentes, selon qu’elles portent l’accent sur l’exigence de la justice ou sur la poursuite de l’utilité sociale. Parce que la satisfaction des intérêts menace parfois de se retourner contre les droits, tandis que la protection des droits tend à discriminer les intérêts, la question se pose de savoir si l’univocité de la formule « intérêt général » ne masque pas une dualité dans sa nature, rendant problématique son statut d’idéal régulateur pour les sociétés modernes. (shrink)

Il est courant de déplorer la perte d’un horizon politique fédérateur apte à mobiliser les membres de nos sociétés dans la poursuite de l’intérêt général. Entre autres responsables de la dissolution du lien politique et de l’affaiblissement du devoir civique, est convoquée la philosophie libérale dont la portée individualiste aurait rendu inconcevable le sacrifice des intérêts particuliers au nom de l’intérêt général. Il s’agit d’éclaircir cette critique en montrant que la reformulation moderne du bien commun par le libéralisme a surtout (...) introduit une indétermination qui rend compte de la difficulté pour ses membres à s’y rapporter. En vertu du droit de chacun à poursuivre ses propres buts, l’intérêt général peut aussi bien désigner la protection des droits que la satisfaction des intérêts particuliers. Or ces deux finalités sont non seulement distinctes mais peuvent également entrer en conflit, comme le révèlent aujourd’hui les débats autour des objectifs de l’Union européenne ou ceux entourant la protection des Biens Publics Mondiaux. Cet ouvrage se propose de montrer que cette tension est déjà présente chez les auteurs fondateurs du libéralisme qui oscillent entre la consécration d’un droit déterminant la sphère des intérêts légitimes et la préservation des intérêts dont découle le régime des droits. L’ambiguïté entre ce qui est d’intérêt général, la garantie des droits, et la poursuite de l’intérêt général sur le principe de composition des intérêts particuliers, contraint alors à redéfinir la nature de la participation politique et citoyenne, en particulier dans le cadre de nos démocraties. (shrink)

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasises an infinite personal responsibility arising for each of us in the face of the Other and in the presence of the Third. It stresses the imperious demand we experience to (...) be open to, prepared for and impassioned with that which we may not know, or recognise, about ourselves or about the Other. Such a demand transcends our intellectual and/or rational potential; it involves us in a carnal and somatic bodily experience of otherness. If we are to speak of Levinasian ethics in a business context, it cannot be a matter of corporate ethics but only a matter of individual managerial ethics. What such an ethics would be like is yet to be outlined. This paper proposes a series of questions and suggestions that will explicate some key terms of a practice organised around a Levinasian vocabulary of otherness, responsibility, proximity, diachrony and justice. (shrink)

This article proposes a new reading of transformative learning theory (TAT), proceeding from an examination of three concepts: the function of habit in the processes of constructing experience, the notion of trial and its potential, and the biographical dimensions of Transformative Learning Theory. This approach leads us to question the theories of experience that tacitly underlie the learning models proposed by Mezirow. The discussion thus opened is part of the controversy and dialogue between the currents of pragmatism, critical hermeneutics and (...) biographical research. (shrink)

Les sciences en général, et les sciences de la vie en particulier, ont un tel impact sur le quotidien des personnes que les scientifiques ont un devoir d’anticipation. Probablement en raison de sa fonction si particulière de support de l’information héréditaire, l’ADN, sa caractérisation, son décryptage, ses modifications, ont été l’objet d’une attention particulière depuis une cinquantaine d’années. C’est de nouveau le cas depuis la découverte puis l’adaptation récente des techniques de modifications ciblées du génome. Des découvertes scientifiques ont lieu (...) chaque jour, elles font rarement la une de l’actualité même si régulièrement des média en manque de sensations fortes nous annoncent une nouvelle révolution. Mais la réalité pratique est rare parce que les découvertes qui amènent à un changement de paradigme sont rares. C’est parce qu’une découverte académique donne rarement lieu à une application technologique et que même si celle-ci est envisagée, le transfert est long, difficile et peu souvent couronné de succès. Il est donc d’autant plus nécessaire aujourd’hui de souligner que c’est à l’une de ces révolutions technologiques que nous assistons avec la nouvelle maîtrise de modifications ciblées du génome grâce au système CRISPR-Cas9 et à ses dérivés. Les enjeux scientifiques et médicaux mais également économiques et environnementaux sont énormes. Il convient donc d’évaluer au plus vite le cadre légal, éthique et sociétal permettant de bénéficier au mieux de ces techniques sans en subir les dangers. Seul un cadre international associant une expertise scientifique pluridisciplinaire à la gouvernance est envisageable, c’est donc à la création d’un Groupe International d’Experts du Génome que nous appelons. Pour ce faire une première position de consensus européen a été élaborée et mise en discussion lors de plusieurs colloques internationaux. (shrink)

Parce qu’elle s’est élaborée à partir d’un héritage antique, l’avocature dispose d’une culture commune dès la fin du Moyen Âge. Dans la France des XVII e et XVIII e siècles, ces caractères partagés se renforcent par la professionnalisation, l’harmonisation institutionnelle des ordres et le renforcement d’un droit commun du barreau, qui n’est pas le fruit du seul travail des avocats et de leurs structures professionnelles ; l’émergence d’un « barreau français » a également été favorisée par l’État et les tribunaux. (...) Avec l’Empire et la Restauration, la construction nationale du barreau connaît un deuxième temps fort ; dans un premier temps, c’est l’État qui s’impose comme son acteur essentiel. (shrink)

This contribution investigates the use of the Czech particle jako in naturally occurring conversations. Inspired by interactional research on unfinished or suspended utterances and on turn-final conjunctions and particles, the analysis aims to trace the possible development of jako from conjunction to a tag-like particle that can be exploited for mobilizing affiliative responses. Traditionally, jako has been described as conjunction used for comparing two elements or for providing a specification of a first element [“X like Y”]. In spoken Czech, however, (...) jako can be flexibly positioned within a speaking turn and does not seem to operate as a coordinating or hypotactic conjunction. As a result, prior studies have described jako as a polyfunctional particle. This article will try to shed light on the meaning of jako in spoken discourse by focusing on its apparent fuzzy or “filler” uses, i.e., when it is found in a mid-turn position in multi-unit turns and in the immediate vicinity of hesitations, pauses, and turn suspensions. Based on examples from mundane, video-recorded conversations and on a sequential and multimodal approach to social interaction, the analyses will first show that jako frequently frames discursive objects that co-participants should respond to. By using jako before a pause and concurrently adopting specific embodied displays, participants can more explicitly seek to mobilize responsive action. Moreover, as jako tends to cluster in multi-unit turns involving the formulation of subjective experience or stance, it can be shown to be specifically designed for mobilizing affiliative responses. Finally, it will be argued that the potential of jako to open up interactive turn spaces can be linked to the fundamental comparative semantics of the original conjunction. (shrink)

Drawing on the principle of subsidiarity, this article develops a framework for allocating medical decision-making authority in the absence of capacity to consent and argues that decisional authority in paediatric transgender healthcare should generally lie in the patient. Regardless of patients’ capacity, there is usually nobody better positioned to make medical decisions that go to the heart of a patient’s identity than the patients themselves. Under the principle of subsidiarity, decisional authority should only be held by a higher level decision-maker, (...) such as parents or judges, if lower level decision-makers are incapable of satisfactorily addressing the issue even with support and the higher level decision-maker is better positioned to satisfactorily address the issue than all lower level decision-makers. Because gender uniquely pertains to personal identity and self-realisation, parents and judges are rarely better positioned to make complex medical decisions. Instead of taking away trans youth’s authority over their healthcare decisions, we should focus on supporting their ability to take the best possible decision for themselves. (shrink)

Background Seeking assent from children for participation in medical research is an ethical imperative of numerous institutions globally. However, none of these organizations provide specific guidance on the criteria or process to be used when obtaining assent. The primary objective of this scoping review was to determine the descriptions of assent discussed in the literature and the reported criteria used for seeking assent for research participation in pre-adolescent children. Methods Medline and Embase databases were searched until November 2020 using the (...) term “assent” in the title or abstract. Inclusion criteria were (1) studies enrolling children which specifically described operationalization of the assent process and (2) studies of the assent process which provided a description of assent. Data collected included participant information, patient criteria for seeking assent, guidelines referenced, description of assent reported, how assent was obtained and assent information presented, and reported assent rate. For qualitative articles focusing on the assent process, important themes were identified. Results A total of 116 articles were included of which 79 (68.9%) operationalized assent and 57 studies (%) described the assent process. The most commonly reported criterion used to determine the ability of a child to assent was age (35.4%, 28/79). The reported minimal age for obtaining pediatric assent varied considerably across and within jurisdictions (5–13 years; median 7.5 years, IQR 7.0, 9.75). Cognitive ability was reported as a criterion for obtaining assent in 5.1% (4/79) of studies. Assent rates were only reported in 17.7% (14/79) of citations and ranged from 32.0 to 100%. Analysis of the 57 studies describing the assent process identified several themes, including age thresholds, assessment of capacity, variable knowledge of pediatric assent and parental roles. Conclusion We found significant variation in criteria used for assessment of patient capacity, delivery of information used to obtain assent and documentation of the assent process. While we acknowledge that individual children, settings and jurisdictions may require different approaches to obtaining assent, there should be agreement on important principles to be followed with resulting common guidance on assessing capacity, delivering information and documentation of the assent process for publication. (shrink)