Protecting human subjects from being exploited is one of the main ethical challenges for clinical research. However, there is also a responsibility to protect and respect the communities who are hosting the research. Recently, attention has focused on the most efficient way of carrying out clinical research, so that it benefits society by providing valuable research while simultaneously protecting and respecting the human subjects and the communities where the research is conducted. Collaboration between partners plays an important role and that (...) is why we carried out a study to describe how collaborative partnership and social value are emerging in clinical research. A supra-analysis design for qualitative descriptive secondary analysis was employed to consider a novel research question that pertained to nurse leaders’ perceptions of ethical recruitment in clinical research and the ethics-related aspects of clinical research from the perspective of administrative staff. The data consisted of two separate pre-existing datasets, comprising 451 pages from 41 interviews, and we considered the research question by using deductive-inductive content analysis with NVivo software. A deductive analysis matrix was generated on the basis of two requirements, namely collaborative partnership and social value, as presented in An Ethical Framework for Biomedical Research by Emanuel et al. The findings showed that collaborative partnership was a cornerstone for ethical clinical research and ways to foster inter-partner collaboration were indicated, such as supporting mutual respect and equality, shared goals and clearly defined roles and responsibilities. In addition, the social value of clinical research was an important precondition for ethical clinical research and its realisation required the research partners to demonstrate collaboration and shared responsibility during the research process. However, concerns emerged that the multidimensional meaning of clinical research for society was not fully recognised. Achieving greater social value for clinical research required greater transparency, setting research priorities, shared responsibility for the dissemination and use of the findings and stronger community awareness of the ethics-related aspects of clinical research. Collaborative partnership and social values are essential for protecting the human subjects and communities involved in clinical research. (shrink)

S’il fallait résumer en un mot l’importance de la contribution du présent ouvrage aux débats sur le genre , c’est celui de «désessentialisation» qui viendrait à l’esprit: tout comme il n’y a pas «la» femme, tout comme il n’y a pas «la» race, il n’y a pas «la» religion. Comme d’autres, le terrain de la religion est un terrain en tension, travaillé par des mouvements théologiques mais aussi idéologiques, sociaux et politiques; de même, la religion n’est pas autarcique par rapport (...) au monde dans lequel elle s’insère et s’exprime, et est affectée par lui. Les quelques 22 contributions réunies dans le présent ouvrage, qui fait suite à un colloque organisé par le Groupe Société Religions Laïcités en mai 2012, convergent toutes pour souligner ainsi, depuis des perspectives disciplinaires distinctesL’ouvrage recueille des contributions d’anthropologues, d’historien-nes, de sociologues, de politistes…. .. (shrink)

The article discusses the creation by young people of a concept of their own lives during adolescence, which is treated as a sign of their subjectivity and autonomy. What was emphasised therein was the significant relationship between the creation of the own life concept by adolescents and their overall development during adolescence. Deliberations were based on the theoretical concepts of Piaget and Niemczyński, as well as in the empirical studies of Nuttin, Nurmi, Zaleski, Trempała, Liberska, Katra, and Czerwińska-Jasiewicz. An (...) extended author’s own model of the creation of an own life concept by adolescents was also presented. This model indicates the main elements of the own life concept of adolescents and the main factors that have an impact on the creation of this concept by them. Conclusions formulated on the basis of the author’s own research were also presented. Further considerations constituted an attempt to substantiate the contention that the creation of the concept of their own lives by adolescents is a manifestation of their subjectivity and autonomy. (shrink)

It is well-known that different social choice procedures often result in different choice sets. The article focuses on how often this is likely to happen in impartial cultures. The focus is on Borda count, plurality method, max-min method and Copeland's procedure. The probabilities of Condorcet violations of the Borda count and plurality method are also reported. Although blatantly false as a descriptive hypothesis, the impartial culture assumption can be given an interpretation which makes the results obtained in impartial cultures particularly (...) significant, viz. the probabilities of deviations in choice sets indicate how far apart are the intuitions underlying various choice procedures. -/- . (shrink)

This study examines the complex relation between spatial experience and aesthetic experience. It is argued that spatial experience specifically in the context of everyday spaces makes it possible to experience them aesthetically as well. A wide selection of research ranging from environmental and philosophical aesthetics to architectural theory, psychology, human geography, and other relevant disciplines is employed in order to achieve a more detailed picture of how spatial experience is formed in the first place. This experience is described mainly in (...) terms of phenomenology but is then related to other ways of understanding experiences and their prerequisites. -/- Different notions of space and spatiality and a more comprehensive articulation of the relation of perception to spatial experience, sensory perception, and how senses contribute to spatial experience are in the focus of attention at the beginning of the study. Different experiential layers that can be distinguished within the space which is closest experienced are explored. Interaction with environment is discussed and the notion of preaesthetic is presented to clarify the relation between the two different types of experiences. Following this, the notion of preaesthetic is studied against eminent notions such as aesthetic attitude and aesthetic engagement that show elements that have traditionally been considered to either lead to or define aesthetic experiences. -/- This study shows that the effect that spatial experience has on revealing aesthetic potentialities in everyday environments is far more complicated than has previously been understood. Due to its contingent qualities, spatial experience sometimes leads to "failed" aesthetic experiences even in situations where there is obvious aesthetic potentiality. Even though there are some overlapping qualities in spatial and aesthetic experiences, they cannot thus be equated, as has more or less been done in different branches studying the topics of art and architectural experiences, for example. In the final part of the study, some possible directions for future research are pointed out and the application possibilities of these new developments in aesthetic theory are presented by short case studies, in which a closer look is taken into a chosen set of urban everyday spaces. (shrink)

Although Judith Butler's theorization of violence has begun to receive growing scholarly attention, the feminist theoretical background of her notion of violence remains unexplored. In order to fill this lacuna, this article explicates the feminist genealogy of Butler's notion of violence. I argue that Butler's theorization of violence can be traced back to Gender Trouble, to her discussion of Monique Wittig's argument that the binary categorization of sex can be conceived as a form of discursive violence. I contend, first, that (...) Butler starts to develop her notion of “gender violence” on the basis of her reading of Wittig, and second, that Butler's more recent writings on military violence and the ethics of nonviolence build on her early interpretation of Wittig. On the basis of my reading, I suggest, in contrast to recent criticism, that Butler's later critique of violence is not at odds with but rather expands upon her prior work on violence. (shrink)

Many generativist accounts argue for very early knowledge of inflection on the basis of very low rates of person/number marking errors in young children's speech. However, studies of Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese have revealed that these low overall error rates actually hide important differences across the verb paradigm. The present study investigated children's production of person/number marked verbs by eliciting present tense verb forms from 82 native Finnish-speaking children aged 2;2–4;8 years. Four main findings were observed: Rates of person/number marking (...) errors were higher in low-frequency person/number contexts, even excluding children who showed no evidence of having learned the relevant morpheme, most errors involved the use of higher frequency forms in lower frequency person/number contexts, error rates were predicted not only by the frequency of person/number contexts but also by the frequency of individual “ready-inflected” lexical target forms, and for low-frequency verbs, lower error rates were observed for verbs with high phonological neighborhood density. It is concluded that any successful account of the development of verb inflection will need to incorporate both rote-storage and retrieval of individual inflected forms and phonological analogy across them. (shrink)

The role and function of public art is currently undergoing some large-scale changes. Many new artworks which are situated within the already existing urban sphere, seem to be changing the definition of public art, each in their own way. Simultaneously, there exists a trend that endorses more traditional forms of public art. Juxtaposing and comparing the aesthetic implications of different types of artworks, it is possible to see how they contribute to the contemporary understanding of the urban sphere. In this (...) paper, I take a look at the explicit and implicit aesthetic values that these simultaneously existing contemporary forms of public art are based on. The cases selected for closer look are examples of prominent and recent works of public art from downtown Helsinki: He who Brings the Light by Pekka Kauhanen and Running Man by Nestori Syrjala. What space and what kind of position is subscribed to the perceiver by these very different types of yet equally established artworks? What kind of experiences and possibilities of participation do these works entail? The focus is on the undergoing redefinition of public art that revolves around these questions. (shrink)

The field of weather and climate ethics is a novel branch of applied ethics, based on environmental sciences and philosophy. Due to recent scientific findings concerning climate change, intentional weather and climate modification schemes have become even more relevant to finding feasible ways to moderate climate change and therefore are in need of careful analysis. When, if ever, can weather modification be deemed morally acceptable? The risks and adverse side-effects as well as indifference with regard to the limits of intervention (...) in natural processes present a case for calling weather modification proposals into question. This review article presents the central ethical research questions of weather ethics from a multidisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to deepen the concept of emerging urban mobility technology. Drawing on philosophical everyday and urban aesthetics, as well as the postphenomenological strand in the philosophy of technology, we explicate the relation between everyday aesthetic experience and urban mobility commoning. Thus, we shed light on the central role of aesthetics for providing depth to the important experiential and value-driven meaning of contemporary urban mobility. We use the example of self-driving vehicle (SDV), as potentially mundane, public, (...) dynamic, and social urban robots, for expanding the range of perspectives relevant for our relations to urban mobility technology. We present the range of existing SDV conceptualizations and contrast them with experiential and aesthetic understanding of urban mobility. In conclusion, we reflect on the potential undesired consequences from the depolitization of technological development, and potential new pathways for speculative thinking concerning urban mobility futures in responsible innovation processes. (shrink)

This is s review essay on Steven J. Brams's "Superior Beings".

In their effort to understand some phenomena, mechanisms, or relations between them, scientists observe reality and construct theories and models to explain their observations. The process is interactive: On the one hand, observations lead to formulating certain models and theories. On the other hand, models and theories direct scholars' observations, because they include conceptualizations of reality and also ideas how the observations should be made. Scientists, in fact, behave just like any human being and most of the animals: all create (...) representations and schemata concerning their living environments which then later on help them to behave in adaptive ways (Neisser 1976).Compared to everyday observations that .. (shrink)

The difficulty of making social choices seems to take on two forms: one that is related to both preferences and the method used in aggregating them and one which is related to the preferences only. In the former type the difficulty has to do with the discrepancies of outcomes resulting from various preference aggregation methods and the computation of winners in elections. Some approaches and results which take their motivation from the computability theory are discussed. The latter ‘institution-free’ type of (...) difficulty pertains to solution theory of the voting games. We discuss the relationships between various solution concepts, e.g. uncovered set, Banks set, Copeland winners. Finally rough sets are utilized in an effort to measure the difficulty of making social choices. (shrink)

The present study was designed to explore the performance costs of negative emotional stimuli in a vigilance task. Forty participants performed a vigilance task in two conditions: one with task-irrelevant negative-arousing pictures and one with task-irrelevant neutral pictures. In addition to performance, we measured subjective state and frontal cerebral activity with near infrared spectroscopy. Overall performance in the negative picture condition was lower than in the neutral picture condition and the negative picture condition had elevated levels of energetic arousal, tense (...) arousal and task-related thoughts. Moreover, there was a significant relationship between the impact of the negative pictures on tense arousal and task-related thoughts and the impact of the negative pictures on performance . These results provide support for indirect cost models of negative emotional stimuli on target detection performance. (shrink)

A literature review of 98 articles concerning clinical pain research in newborn infants was conducted to evaluate how researchers report the ethical issues related to their studies and how journals guide this reporting. The articles were published in 49 different scientific journals. The ethical issues most often mentioned were parental informed consent (94%) and ethical review approval (87%). In 75% of the studies the infants suffered pain during the research when placebo, no treatment or otherwise inadequate pain management was applied. (...) Discussion about benefits versus harm to research participants was lacking. A quarter of the journals did not have any ethical guidelines for submitted manuscripts. We conclude that ethical considerations did not play a significant role in the articles studied. Missing and superficial guidelines enable authors to offer studies with fragile research ethics. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo invitar a reflexionar sobre la obra de una filósofa que representa uno de los pensamientos más originales del quehacer filosófico español: María Zambrano. Sus planteamientos en torno a la crítica cultural y género, la crítica al pensamiento moderno, son en sí, una clara crítica a la razón patriarcal. Repensar el quehacer político-práctico de María Zambrano como una figura de la emancipación nos permitirá entender nuestro propio presente.

“¿Cómo un ser humano cualquiera, educado en los valores cristianos que son predominantes en los sectores militares de la sociedad chilena pudo, como resultado de sus comportamientos de obediencia, transgredir los umbrales de la ética y realizar actos criminales?”. Esta pregunta de investigación guía el trabajo de María Teresa Pozzoli que reseñamos. El libro de María Teresa Pozzoli aborda la debida obediencia militar arraigada en la ideología de las Fuerzas Armadas chilenas durante el período..

This book is aimed at both philosophers and scholars of American literature who wish to reexamine the philosophical depth of Melville’s writings. Contributions deal with various philosophical aspects of Melville’s work, including well-known texts such as Moby-Dick as well as lesser-known works such as Pierre, “The Encantadas,” and Clarel.

Muchas y diversas son las preguntas que nos hacemos en lo que atañe a la sociedad civil en los complejos tiempos actuales: ¿Qué entendemos por sociedad civil? ¿Puede ella concebirse separadamente de los Estados que la constriñen? ¿Podrá el esfuerzo solidario de una sociedad civil organizada internacionalmente desafiar al mercado capitalista neoliberal? ¿Cuáles son las propuestas que la sociedad civil hoy día presenta para los ciudadanos? Pero además, ¿quiénes conforman la sociedad civil actua..

Understanding human beings and their distinctive rational and volitional capacities requires a clear account of such things as reasons, desires, emotions, and motives, and how they combine to produce and explain human behaviour. Maria Alvarez presents a fresh and incisive study of these concepts, centred on reasons and their role in human agency.

How Moderate Relativists Should Explain the Appearance of Disagreements About Taste Moderate relativists such as Kölbel and Lasersohn have motivated the semantic framework by arguing that unlike contextualism, it can explain why there appear to be disagreements of taste. The solution relies on the relativist notion of a proposition whose truth depends on a judge parameter. This notion coupled with the view that contradicting propositions create an appearance of disagreement allegedly enables them to secure the right predictions. This paper questions (...) the argumentative strategy by showing that there are no basis to infer pragmatic data from formal semantics. I then present a way to understand the relativist framework from the point of view of mental representation. The view put forward explains the missing relation between the semantic framework and pragmatics, and predicts why there is an appearance of disagreements about taste. (shrink)

Contextualist accounts of aesthetic predicates have difficulties explaining why we feel that speakers are disagreeing when they make true and compatible but superficially contradictory aesthetic judgments. One possible way to account for the disagreement is hybrid expressivism, which holds that the disagreement happens at the level of pragmatically conveyed, clashing contents about the speakers’ conative states. Marques defends such a strategy, combining dispositionalism about value, contextualism, and hybrid expressivism. This paper critically evaluates the plausibility of the suggested pragmatic mechanisms in (...) conveying the kind of contents Marques takes to explain disagreements. The positive part suggests an alternative account of how aesthetic judgments are sources of information about speakers’ conative aesthetic states. (shrink)

The experienced quality of urban environments has not traditionally been at the forefront of understanding how cities evolve through time. Within the humanistic tradition, the temporal dimension of cities has been dealt with through tracing urban or architectural histories or interpreting science-fiction scenarios, for example. However, attempts at understanding the relation between currently existing components of cities and planning based on them, towards the future, has not captured the experience of the temporal layers of cities to a satisfying degree. Contemporary (...) urban environments comprise both lasting and fairly stable elements as well as those that change continuously: change is an inevitable part of urban life. Different aspects of city life evolve with a different tempo: urban nature has its cycles, inhabitants their rhythms, and building materials and styles different lifespans, for example. Recognizing them becomes an especially important issue when future imaginaries are projected onto existing urban structures and when decisions about the details of urban futures are made. This paper aims at bringing environmental and urban aesthetics into the discussion about the possible directions of urban futures. The focus is on introducing the notion of aesthetic sustainability as a tool to better understand how urban futures unfold experientially and how aesthetic values of urban environments develop with time. This concept has some background in the field of design theory, more specifically in sustainable usage and product design, but it has not so far been used in order to study large scale living environments. The concept can prove to be a valuable supporting tool in urban sustainability transformations based on how it captures the experiential side of the physical and temporal dimensions of cities. (shrink)

The pervasiveness of technology has undeniably changed the way the urban everyday is structured and experienced. Understanding the deep impact of this development on the everyday experience and its foundational aesthetic components is needed in order to determine how the skills and capacities to cope with the change, as well as to steer it, can be improved. Urban technology solutions – how they are defined, applied and used – are changing the sphere of everyday experience for urban dwellers. Philosophical and (...) applied approaches to urban aesthetics offer perspectives to understand technologically mediated sensory experiences within the urban realm. This chapter shows how new urban technologies act as an agent of change within the familiar urban environment. We outline how the perspective of philosophical aesthetics can be used to understand urban technologies and their role in the constitution of everyday urban lifeworlds. (shrink)

El libro de María Novo está compuesto por un conjunto de artículos en los que diversos autores denuncian el tratamiento invisibilizante que el paradigma vigente -en el contexto de la Modernidad y también de la Globalización- ha comprometido la dignidad y la integridad de dos sujetos o entidades: la mujer y la naturaleza. El primer capítulo escrito por la misma María Novo, examina el papel que en los últimos siglos las sociedades patriarcales le han otorgado a la naturaleza y a (...) las mujeres, am.. (shrink)

María Jesús Vitón es Doctora en Ciencias de la Educación y Profesora Titular de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Desarrolla su docencia y sus investigaciones en el terreno de lo socio-educativo, en grupos, en territorios, en países y en paisajes donde su quehacer profesional cobra el sentido de contribuir a transformar; a transformar con otros.Diálogos con Raquel es una propuesta metodológica práctica para planificar, desarrollar y evaluar acciones educativas en la diversidad cultural, con ..

Nurses’ duties and patients’ rights have been important foci in nursing. Nurses’ rights legitimate the power and responsibility of the profession. There are few published articles on this subject in the nursing science literature. This article is a theoretical examination of nurses’ rights that aims to structure (i.e. show the internal logic of) those that have been little studied. It is based on the philosophical literature and published research. Nurses’ rights can be divided into: human and civil rights, rights based (...) on health care legislation, professional rights, and earned rights. In this context, professional rights relate to nursing and also to tasks shared with other health care professions. Analyzing nurses’ rights will help to promote these rights, improve nurses’ position both nationally and internationally, and provide possibilities for enhancing patient care. (shrink)