I respond to H. M. Collins's claim (1985, 1990, 1993) that experimental inquiry cannot be objective because the only criterium experimentalists have for determining whether a technique is "working" is the production of "correct" (i.e., the expected) data. Collins claims that the "experimenters' regress," the name he gives to this data-technique circle, cannot be broken using the resources of experiment alone. I argue that the data-technique circle, can be broken even though any interpretation of the raw data produced by techniques (...) is theory-dependent. However, it is possible to break this circle by eliminating dependence on even those theoretical presuppositions that are shared by an entire scientific community through the use of multiple independently theory-dependent techniques to produce robust bodies of data. Moreover, I argue, that it is the production of robust bodies of data that convinces experimentalists of the objectivity of their data interpretations. (shrink)

Rasmussen (1993) argues that, because electron microscopists did not use robustness and would not have been warranted in using it as a criterion for the reality or the artifactuality of mesosomes, the bacterial mesosome serves as a test case for robustness that it fails. I respond by arguing that a more complete reading of the research literature on the mesosome shows that ultimately the more robust body of data did not support the mesosome and that electron microscopists used and were (...) warranted in using robustness as a criterion for the artifactuality of mesosomes. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to theory structure and theory change in science do not fare well when confronted with the practice of certain fields of science. We offer an account of contemporary practice in molecular biology designed to address two questions: Is theory change in this area of science gradual or saltatory? What is the relation between molecular biology and the fields of traditional biology? Our main focus is a recent episode in molecular biology, the discovery of enzymatic RNA. We argue that (...) our reconstruction of this episode shows that traditional approaches to theory structure and theory change need considerable refinement if they are to be defended as generally applicable. 1This paper emerged from discussions between us, and we are both equally responsible for its errors. We would like to thank Yvonne Paterson for helpful comments. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine an experimental technique, gene targeting, used for establishing genotype/phenotype relationships. Through analyzing a case study, I identify many pitfalls that may lead to false conclusions about these relationships. I argue that some of these pitfalls may seriously affect gene targeting's usefulness for associating phenotypes with genes cataloged by the Human Genome Project. This case also shows the use of gene targeted mice as model systems for studying genotype/phenotype relationships in humans. Moreover, I argue that it (...) reveals the weakness of one attempt to draw conclusions about the biological determination of sexual and aggressive behaviors in humans. (shrink)

Background In this study, we examined the ethical implications of Egypt’s new clinical trial law, employing the ethical framework proposed by Emanuel et al. and comparing it to various national and supranational laws. This analysis is crucial as Egypt, considered a high-growth pharmaceutical market, has become an attractive location for clinical trials, offering insights into the ethical implementation of bioethical regulations in a large population country with a robust healthcare infrastructure and predominantly treatment-naïve patients. Methods We conducted a comparative analysis (...) of Egyptian law with regulations from Sweden and France, including the EU Clinical Trials Regulation, considering ethical human subject research criteria, and used a directed approach to qualitative content analysis to examine the laws and regulations. This study involved extensive peer scrutiny, frequent debriefing sessions, and collaboration with legal experts with relevant international legal expertise to ensure rigorous analysis and interpretation of the laws. Results On the rating of the seven different principles (social and scientific values, scientific validity, fair selection of participants, risk-benefit ratio, independent review, informed consent and respect for participants) Egypt, France, and EU regulations had comparable scores. Specific principles (Social Value, Scientific Value, and Fair selection of participants) were challenging to directly identify due to certain regulations embodying 'implicit' principles more than explicitly stated ones. Conclusion The analysis underscores Egypt's alignment with internationally recognized ethical principles, as outlined by Emanuel et al., through its comparison with French, Swedish, and EU regulations, emphasizing the critical need for Egypt to continuously refine its ethical regulations to safeguard participant protection and research integrity. Key issues identified include the necessity to clarify and standardize the concept of social value in research, alongside concerns regarding the expertise and impartiality of ethical review boards, pointing towards a broader agenda for enhancing research ethics in Egypt and beyond. (shrink)

This book focuses on a question issued from The Architectonic of Pure Reason, one of the most important sections of Kant's first Critique: what is the human being? It suggests that the answer to this question is tied to a particular account of the unity of reason - one that stresses its purposive character.

A well-known debate in normative ethics is that between proponents of Act Consequentialism and Rule Consequentialism. Given the structural similarities between Rule Consequentialism and existing forms of Contractualism, one might expect a similar debate to arise among contractualists. However, this is not the case. Some, following T. M. Scanlon, even argue that this question is “misconceived” – that there is something deeply mistaken about considering the possibility of an act-based form of contractualism. In this paper, I challenge this claim.

Non-Archimedean probability functions allow us to combine regularity with perfect additivity. We discuss the philosophical motivation for a particular choice of axioms for a non-Archimedean probability theory and answer some philosophical objections that have been raised against infinitesimal probabilities in general.

A mutual relation between God and the world provides a crucial distinction between panentheism and both classical theism and pantheism. Several proposals responding to Analytical Theology's challenge to distinguish panentheism from other forms of theism are considered and found inadequate. After defining mutual relation, conceptual evidence and the frequency of descriptions of panentheism that affirm a mutual relation between God and the world provide evidence that a mutual relation is crucial to distinguishing panentheism. Finally, benefits of recognizing a mutual relation (...) between God and the world as crucial to panentheism are described. (shrink)

The “happy fish” passage concluding the “Autumn Floods” chapter of the Classical Chinese text known as the Zhuangzi has traditionally been seen to advance a form of relativism which precludes objectivity. My aim in this paper is to question this view with close reference to the passage itself. I further argue that the central concern of the two philosophical personae in the passage – Zhuangzi and Huizi – is not with the epistemic standards of human judgements (the established view since (...) Hansen, “The Relatively Happy Fish”), but with the more basic problem of species-specific perspectives. On my reading, Zhuangzi’s emphatic positionality in the passage – on the dam, accompanied by his friend Huizi – plausibly suggests a circumspect reflection on the limitedness of human knowledge. It is significant that Zhuangzi’s knowledge of fish happiness is avowedly from a certain place, and not absolute. But there is still a sense in which this view is objective: namely, insofar as it adequately accounts for an inherently human perspective on the world. I call this modest form of relativism ‘Species Relativism’, which, crucially, leaves room for objectivity, even though a fully objective (i.e. absolute) view of the world is not accessible to humans. (shrink)

Reflection on the historical injustice suffered by many formerly colonized groups has left us with a peculiar account of their claims to material objects. One important upshot of that account, relevant to present day justice, is that many people seem to think that members of indigenous groups have special claims to the use of particular external objects by virtue of their attachment to them. In the first part of this paper I argue against that attachment-based claim. In the second part (...) I suggest that, to provide a normatively defensible account of why sometimes agents who are attached to certain external objects might also have special claims over them, the most important consideration is whether the agents making such claims suffer from structural injustice in the present. In the third part I try to explain why structural injustice matters, in what way attachment-based claims relate to it and when they count. (shrink)

The Snow White problem is introduced to demonstrate how learning something of which one could not have learnt the opposite (due to observer selection bias) can change an agent’s probability assignment. This helps us to analyse the Sleeping Beauty problem, which is deconstructed as a combinatorial engine and a subjective wrapper. The combinatorial engine of the problem is analogous to Bertrand’s boxes paradox and can be solved with standard probability theory. The subjective wrapper is clarified using the Snow White problem. (...) Sample spaces for all three problems are presented. The conclusion is that subjectivity plays no irreducible role in solving the Sleeping Beauty problem and that no reference to centered worlds is required to provide the answer. (shrink)

The Snow White problem is introduced to demonstrate how learning something of which one could not have learnt the opposite (due to observer selection bias) can change an agent’s probability assignment. This helps us to analyse the Sleeping Beauty problem, which is deconstructed as a combinatorial engine and a subjective wrapper. The combinatorial engine of the problem is analogous to Bertrand’s boxes paradox and can be solved with standard probability theory. The subjective wrapper is clarified using the Snow White problem. (...) Sample spaces for all three problems are presented. The conclusion is that subjectivity plays no irreducible role in solving the Sleeping Beauty problem and that no reference to centered worlds is required to provide the answer. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The central aim of Peter Hägel’s Billionaires in World Politics (BWP) is to challenge the assumption that private individuals lack agency and power in world politics – an assumption that is widely shared in the field of International Relations (IR). Hägel’s methodological strategy to achieve this aim is twofold. First, he concentrates on minutest biographical aspects of billionaires to lay bare the idiosyncrasy of their choices, and to falsify, thus, structuralist assumptions of how individual agency is undermined by factors (...) such as class, roles, or fields. Second, Hägel engages in counter-factual reasoning to support the claim that these individual decisions end up having a real impact on public affairs abroad. This impact is difficult to overestimate given that, as Hägel reveals, billionaires have affected a whole array of political issues, including Brexit, climate change policy, democratic development in Eastern Europe, global health policy, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and the war in Iraq. This introduction starts off by elaborating on the central scholarly contribution of BWP. Following that, this introduction explains why the insights that BWP provides suggest that we do not live in a neo-feudal order, despite the immense global economic inequality which billionaires’ wealth manifests. (shrink)

This article examines Kant’s and Marx’s analysis of religion in its relation to human emancipation. It highlights some important affinities in their accounts of human nature and their critique of religious authority including: the emphasis on freedom as distinguishing human beings from other species, the relation between moral and political progress, the critique of revealed religion, the role of political community and the importance of ethical community to achieve moral emancipation.

The pseudonymous works Kierkegaard wrote during the period 1843–46 have been responsible for establishing his reputation as an important philosophical thinker, but for Kierkegaard himself, they were merely preparatory for what he saw as the primary task of his authorship: to elucidate the meaning of what it is to live as a Christian and thus to show his readers how they could become truly Christian. The more overtly religious and specifically Christian works Kierkegaard produced in the period 1847–51 were devoted (...) to this task. In this book Sylvia Walsh focuses on the writings of this later period and locates the key to Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity in the “inverse dialectic” that is involved in “living Christianly.” In the book’s four main chapters, Walsh examines in detail how this inverse dialectic operates in the complementary relationship of the negative qualifications of Christian existence—sin, the possibility of offense, self-denial, and suffering—to the positive qualifications—faith, forgiveness, new life/love/hope, and joy and consolation. It was Kierkegaard’s aim, she argues, “to bring the negative qualifications, which he believed had been virtually eliminated in Christendom, once again into view, to provide them with conceptual clarity, and to show their essential relation to, and necessity in, securing a correct understanding and expression of the positive qualifications of Christian existence.”. (shrink)

Whilst Rahimzadeh et al. (2023) apply a critical lens to the pedagogical use of LLM bioethics assistants, we outline here further reason for skepticism. Two features of LLM chatbots are of signific...

This dissertation abstract and the reflection commentary present the work done by Dr. Lea Stadtler. Comprising four articles, the dissertation explores the challenge of designing successful public–private partnerships for development and contributes to the discourse on partnerships and business engagement in society. Article I adopts the company perspective and develops a conceptual framework for interest alignment in PPPs for development. Based on a theoretical analysis, Article II examines the role that different structures play in handling common design challenges. Articles III (...) and IV are empirical: The former analyzes how partners cope with tensions occurring on the PPP’s boundaries, while Article IV explores the roles of broker organizations, which increasingly facilitate the partnering process of PPPs for development. This extended dissertation abstract introduces the dissertation’s research focus and summarizes each article’s research question, methods, and main findings. The reflection commentary in the appendix discusses the author’s views of her dissertation journey as a junior scholar and the research process. (shrink)

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy can lead to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. FASD is a spectrum of structural, functional, and neurodevelopmental problems with often lifelong implications, affecting communities worldwide. It is a leading preventable form of intellectual disabilities and therefore warrants effective prevention approaches. However, well-intended FASD prevention can increase stigmatization of individuals with FASD, women who consume or have consumed alcohol during pregnancy, and non-biological parents and guardians of individuals with FASD. This narrative review surveyed the literature on stigmatization related (...) to FASD. Public stigma appears to be the most common form of stigma studied. Less is known about FASD-related self-stigma, stigma by association, and structural stigma. Accordingly, the current literature on FASD-related stigma does not appear to provide sufficient guidance for effectively reducing FASD-related stigma. However, lessons can be learned from other related health topics and the use of a systematic approach for the development of health promotion programs, namely Intervention Mapping. (shrink)

The proliferation of public–private partnerships for development as an answer to many public challenges calls for careful evaluation. To this end, tailored frameworks are fundamental for helping understand the PPPs’ impact and for guiding corrective adjustment. Scholars have developed frameworks focusing on the partners’ relationships, the order of effects, and the distinction between outputs and outcomes. To capture a PPP’s complexity and multiple linkages with its environment, we argue that a thorough evaluation should adopt a stakeholder-oriented approach and consider the (...) costs and benefits that a PPP implies for them—especially as taxpayers’ money is involved. For this purpose, we build on a stakeholder-oriented evaluation framework from the nonprofit business partnership literature. In line with our broad evaluation conception, we extend it with the manifold ripple effects that PPPs for development have and include the time dimension for the links between different PPP stages and related outcomes to become clearer. Applying this framework to an illustrative case, we highlight important direct and especially indirect stakeholder outcomes, which a narrow evaluation would omit, point to the challenges involved in the evaluation endeavor, and identify interesting future research areas. (shrink)

A surprising feature of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance pamphlets is their appeal to a foundational classical Chinese text, the Laozi (otherwise known as the Daodejing), to buttress their critique of fascism and authoritarianism. I argue that from the perspective of a 1942 educated readership, the act of quoting the Laozi functioned as a subtle and pointed nod to anti-fascist intellectuals in pre-war Germany, many of whom had interpreted the Laozi as an anti-authoritarian and pacifist text. To a sympathetic reader, (...) the Laozi therefore constituted an apt reference point for critiquing National Socialism. I then introduce a complication for this wartime reading of the Laozi from the perspective of its ambiguous reception in ancient Chinese political thought. I more specifically discuss an ancient line of interpretation of the Laozi that points in the direction of authoritarianism — in stark tension with the White Rose message of passive resistance and popular revolt. (shrink)

It is widely believed that the ancient Greeks thought that Thales was the first philosopher, and that they therefore maintained that philosophy had a Greek origin. This paper challenges these assumptions, arguing that most ancient Greek thinkers who expressed views about the history and development of philosophy rejected both positions. I argue that not even Aristotle presented Thales as the first philosopher, and that doing so would have undermined his philosophical commitments and interests. Beyond Aristotle, the view that Thales was (...) the first philosopher is attested almost nowhere in antiquity. In the classical, Hellenistic, and post-Hellenistic periods, we witness a marked tendency to locate the beginning of philosophy in a time going back further than Thales. Remarkably, ancient Greek thinkers most often traced the origins of philosophy to earlier non-Greek peoples. Contrary to the received view, then, I argue that (1) vanishingly few Greek writers pronounced Thales the first philosopher; and (2) most Greek thinkers did not even advocate a Greek origin of philosophy. Finally, I show that the view that philosophy originated with Thales (along with its misleading attribution to the Greeks in general) has roots in problematic, and in some cases manifestly racist, eighteenth-century historiography of philosophy. (shrink)

_Living Poetically_ is the first book to focus primarily on Kierkegaard's existential aesthetics as opposed to traditional aesthetic features of his writings such as the use of pseudonyms, literary techniques and figures, and literary criticism. _Living Poetically_ traces the development of the concept of the poetic in Kierkegaard's writings as that concept is worked out in an ethical-religious perspective in contrast to the aesthetics of early German romanticism and Hegelian idealism. Sylvia Walsh seeks to elucidate what it means, in (...) Kierkegaard's view, to be an authentic poet in the form of a poetic writer and to clarify his own role as a Christian poet and writer as he understood it. Walsh shows that, in spite of strong criticisms made of the poetic in some of his writings, Kierkegaard maintained a fundamentally positive understanding of the poetic as an essential ingredient in ethical and religious forms of life. Walsh thus reclaims Kierkegaard as a poetic thinker and writer from those who would interpret him as an ironic practitioner of an aestheticism devoid of and detached from the ethical-religious as well as from those who view him as rejecting the poetic and aesthetic on ethical or religious grounds. Viewing contemporary postmodern feminism and deconstruction as advocating a romantic mode of living poetically, Walsh concludes with a feminist reading of Kierkegaard that affirms both individuality and relatedness, commonalities and differences between the self and others, men and women, for the fashioning of an authentic mode of living poetically in the present age. (shrink)

This essay considers Pamela Sue Anderson’s work in relation to her participation in the Enhancing Life Project from 2015 until her death in 2017. Offering a critical interpretation and reconstruction of Anderson’s final work, this essay also gestures beyond it. It begins by narrating her participation in the Enhancing Life Project. Next, it focuses on her treatment of capability and vulnerability, identifying shifts in her thought and bringing theological symbols and a constructive theological interest to the conversation. Anderson depicted the (...) relation of capability and vulnerability as a “threshold for enhancing human life.” This contribution examines her implied metaphor of a spatial or temporal crossing point and evaluates Anderson’s original post-Kantian conceptualization of threshold in relation to the shifts in her thinking. A sympathetic but more adequate approach to enhancing vulnerable life can be informed by Simone de Beauvoir’s phenomenological approach to lived experience and her construal of the body as a lived situation. When vulnerability is interpreted as a situated susceptibility to being changed, for good or for ill, then threshold language can be reintroduced in relation to the intensification, enhancement, and transformation of life, that is, of the “aliveness of life.”. (shrink)

The distinctiveness of panentheism will facilitate its future development. Further, having a clear distinctive can facilitate conversations among panentheists from diverse religious traditions by helping recognize concepts that are compatible or similar to aspects of panentheism. Finally, having a clear distinctive facilitates recognizing relations between positions that are similar to panentheism and explicit forms of panentheism. An examination of three claims about the distinctiveness of panentheism suggests that a mutual relation between God and the world aids in identifying the distinctiveness (...) of panentheism. The nature of a mutual relation, evidence that a mutual relation is important to panentheism, and describing the benefits of recognizing a mutual relation support a mutual relation as distinctive of panentheism. (shrink)

Die Staatsform einer konstitutionellen Demokratie ist von zentraler Bedeutung für John Rawls’ Gerechtigkeitstheorie. Sie stellt das grundlegendste, rechtlich verfasste Institutionensystem einer Gesellschaft dar, welches Bürger*innen gleiche Grundfreiheiten ermöglichen soll, einschließlich der hierfür erforderlichen kulturellen, ökonomischen und sozialen Voraussetzungen. Diese Form der Demokratie soll die wichtigsten institutionellen Anforderungen Rawls’ liberal-egalitärer Auffassung binnenstaatlicher Gerechtigkeit verwirklichen.

This collected volume addresses issues pertaining to education and migration from a variety of philosophical and ethical perspectives. -/- It is high time to critically analyze ethical issues in education under conditions of globalization, not only because migration and globalization are topical issues, but also because dominant academic approaches in the ethics and political philosophy of education have a tendency to narrow their focus on the education of sedentary citizens. However, many learners and educators experience high levels of both voluntary (...) and constrained mobility. The contributions to Education and Migration address issues pertaining to migration-related education from a variety of ethical and philosophical perspectives, including analytic applied ethics, continental philosophy, care ethics, Hegelian philosophy, the capability approach and theories of distributive justice. Distinguished scholars, as well as younger researchers, from a variety of disciplines (educational scholars, lawyers, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists) tackle in these eight essays core issues in the ethics and political philosophy of education, such as citizenship education or justice in access to education, from a perspective that takes human mobilities into account. -/- The collection puts a special emphasis on the diversity of migratory experiences, on the significance of education for citizens and non-citizen migrants, long-term residents and undocumented children, immigrants and return migrants. (shrink)

It has often been noted that liberal democracies are facing a serious political crisis. A common reaction to this situation is to call for more comprehensive or more effective liberal democratic education. This volume discusses some of the most important challenges to and critiques of the paradigm of liberal democratic education. In doing so, it offers novel insights into how liberal democratic education can be amended, extended or qualified to address the special challenges of the current political moment.

Thomas Pogge absolvierte ein Ph.D.-Programm in Philosophie an der Harvard University und wurde dort von John Rawls betreut. Seine Dissertation argumentierte für die Extension Rawls’ Gerechtigkeitstheorie auf globale Verhältnisse. Pogges globale Gerechtigkeitstheorie betrachtet weltweite sozioökonomische Armut als strukturelles Problem für das insbesondere reiche Länder und deren Regierungen verantwortlich sind. In der Ausarbeitung seiner eigenen, politisch-liberalen Theorie internationaler Gerechtigkeit kritisierte Rawls Pogges Auffassung globaler Gerechtigkeit. Pogge wiederum hat in methodologischen Debatten Rawls’ politische Philosophie für deren Fokus auf die Grundstruktur und Grundgüter (...) verteidigt. (shrink)

This book will be a good tool in planning and implementing plans for school improvement and continued student growth.

The pseudonymous works Kierkegaard wrote during the period 1843–46 have been responsible for establishing his reputation as an important philosophical thinker, but for Kierkegaard himself, they were merely preparatory for what he saw as the primary task of his authorship: to elucidate the meaning of what it is to live as a Christian and thus to show his readers how they could become truly Christian. The more overtly religious and specifically Christian works Kierkegaard produced in the period 1847–51 were devoted (...) to this task. In this book Sylvia Walsh focuses on the writings of this later period and locates the key to Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity in the “inverse dialectic” that is involved in “living Christianly.” In the book’s four main chapters, Walsh examines in detail how this inverse dialectic operates in the complementary relationship of the negative qualifications of Christian existence—sin, the possibility of offense, self-denial, and suffering—to the positive qualifications—faith, forgiveness, new life/love/hope, and joy and consolation. It was Kierkegaard’s aim, she argues, “to bring the negative qualifications, which he believed had been virtually eliminated in Christendom, once again into view, to provide them with conceptual clarity, and to show their essential relation to, and necessity in, securing a correct understanding and expression of the positive qualifications of Christian existence.”. (shrink)

Entrevista realizada durante a conferência proferida por Sylvia Serbin nas atividades do “Congresso Internacional Territorialidade e Saude: desigualdades raciais e sociais em contextos locais e globais”, organizado e coordenado pelo Nucleo de Estudos e Pesquisa em Psicanalise, Identidade, Negritude e Sociedade, ocorrido de 03 a 7 de setembro de 2014, no Centro de Ciências da Saude da Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia, em Santo Antonio de Jesus/BA.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This study aimed to explore stakeholders’ perspectives on the ethical considerations for returning individual pharmacogenomics research results to people living with HIV. A qualitative approach to investigation involved five focus group discussions with 30 Community representatives, 12 key informant interviews with researchers, and 12 in-depth interviews with research ethics committee members. In total, 54 stakeholders who were involved in pharmacogenomics research and HIV treatment and care contributed to the data collection between September 2021 and February 2022. The study explored five (...) prominent themes: (i) defining the nature of research results to return to participants; (ii) preparing research participants to receive their results; (iii) obtaining informed consent for the return of results; (iv) opinions on health personnel to return the results to participants; and (v) opinions on how research results should be communicated to participants. Respondents identified various strategies for the return of individual results with minimal ethical risks including the setting up of a diverse and independent committee to undertake a risk-benefit assessment based on local context; ongoing discussions about the possible kinds of results and their implications throughout the study; and employing genetic counsellors to communicate results to participants. The strategies identified in this study should be further studied and independently verified. (shrink)

Defending a procedural conception of global justice that calls for the establishment of reasonably democratic arrangements within and beyond the state, this book argues for a justice-based understanding of social development and justifies why a democracy-promoting international development practice is a requirement of global justice.