An initial distinction is made between two ways of referring in thought to a particular object. One can think of an object in virtue of having a descriptive condition in mind which uniquely denotes that object. Alternatively, one can think about a particular in a more direct way. It is with the nature of this more direct sort of reference that the subsequent discussion is primarily concerned. ;It has been argued that the relation of direct reference is purely causal in (...) nature. A number of difficulties are raised for this causal view. A diagnosis of these difficulties suggests that the causal view ignores the cognitive aspects of direct reference. ;The idea that direct reference is a cognitive relation is not new. Bertrand Russell's notion of knowledge by acquaintance can be thought of as involving the idea of a relation of reference which is direct and cognitive. A good place to begin an exploration of the cognitive dimensions of direct reference is with Russell's notion of acquaintance. Thus this notion is analysed in some depth. ;An objection to the effect that acquaintance is a relation incapable in principle of playing a role in an account of reference is shown to be unfounded. This clears the way for an extended discussion of the nature of acquaintance. This discussion suggests that we should posit a special demonstrative way in which objects can be presented to us. This demonstrative way of being presented with an object is in turn explored by way of an extended metaphor, in which it is suggested that becoming acquainted with an object should be thought of as the opening of a mental file of a special sort for that object. ;Some indirect support for this account of demonstrative modes of presentation and the associated account of direct reference comes from the fact that these notions can help solve the problem of cognitive significance that has been thought to pose a serious threat to theories that somehow treat reference as direct. ;Finally, some potential counterexamples are examined and shown not to seriously threaten the acquaintance theory of direct reference. (shrink)

Stress in health care is affected by moral factors. When people are prevented from doing ‘good’ they may feel that they have not done what they ought to or that they have erred, thus giving rise to a troubled conscience. Empirical studies show that health care personnel sometimes refer to conscience when talking about being in ethically difficult everyday care situations. This study aimed to construct and validate the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire (SCQ), a nine-item instrument for assessing stressful situations (...) and the degree to which they trouble the conscience. The items were based on situations previously documented as causing negative stress for health care workers. Content and face validity were established by expert panels and pilot studies that selected relevant items and modified or excluded ambiguous ones. A convenience sample of 444 health care personnel indicated that the SCQ had acceptable validity and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha exceeded 0.83 for the overall scale). Explorative factor analysis identified and labelled two factors: ‘internal demands’ and ‘external demands and restrictions’. The findings suggest that the SCQ is a concise and practical instrument for use in various health care contexts. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the conditions for nurses' daily patient education work by focusing on managers' way of speaking about the patient education provided by nurses in hospital care. An explorative, qualitative design with a social constructionist perspective was used. Data were collected from three focus group interviews and analysed by means of critical discourse analysis. Discursive practice can be explained by the ideology of hegemony. Due to a heavy workload and lack of time, managers could ‘see’ neither their (...) role as a supporter of the patient education provided by nurses, nor their role in the development of nurses' pedagogical competence. They used organisational, financial, medical and legal reasons for explaining their failure to support nurses' provision of patient education. The organisational discourse was an umbrella term for ‘things’ such as cost‐effectiveness, which were prioritised over patient education. There is a need to remove managerial barriers to the professional development of nurses' patient education. Managers should be responsible for ensuring and overseeing that nurses have the prerequisites necessary for providing patient education as well as for enabling continuous reflective dialogue and opportunities for learning in practice. (shrink)

Documentary film, in the words of Bill Nichols, is one of the "discourses of sobriety" that include science, economics, politics, and history-discourses that claim to describe the "real," to tell the truth. Yet documentary film, in more obvious ways than does history, straddles the categories of fact and fiction, art and document, entertainment and knowledge. And the visual languages with which it operates have quite different effects than does the written text. In the following interview conducted during the winter of (...) 1997, historian Ann-Louise Shapiro raises questions about genre-the relationship of form to content and meaning-with documentary filmmaker Jill Godmilow.In order to explore the possibilities and constraints of non-fiction film as a medium for representing history, Godmilow was asked: What are the strategies and techniques by which documentary films make meaning? In representing historical events, how does a non-fiction filmmaker think about accuracy? authenticity? invention? What are the criteria you have in mind when you call a film like The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl "dishonest"? How does the tension between making art and making history affect documentary filmmaking? Should documentary filmmakers think of themselves, in the phrase of Ken Burns, as "tribal storytellers"? What kind of historical consciousness is produced by documentary film? (shrink)

Documentary film, in the words of Bill Nichols, is one of the "discourses of sobriety" that include science, economics, politics, and history-discourses that claim to describe the "real," to tell the truth. Yet documentary film, in more obvious ways than does history, straddles the categories of fact and fiction, art and document, entertainment and knowledge. And the visual languages with which it operates have quite different effects than does the written text. In the following interview conducted during the winter of (...) 1997, historian Ann-Louise Shapiro raises questions about genre-the relationship of form to content and meaning-with documentary filmmaker Jill Godmilow.In order to explore the possibilities and constraints of non-fiction film as a medium for representing history, Godmilow was asked: What are the strategies and techniques by which documentary films make meaning? In representing historical events, how does a non-fiction filmmaker think about accuracy? authenticity? invention? What are the criteria you have in mind when you call a film like The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl "dishonest"? How does the tension between making art and making history affect documentary filmmaking? Should documentary filmmakers think of themselves, in the phrase of Ken Burns, as "tribal storytellers"? What kind of historical consciousness is produced by documentary film? (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 1 Seiten: 39-50.

Since the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon has arisen on the global stage, as girls have increasingly begun to raise their voices. In an effort to achieve new philosophical understandings of contemporary childhoods in a post-truth era, the present article examines this Girl Rising movement from an existential perspective. In doing so, the article aims to problematise children’s right to be heard and listened to, as enshrined in Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. (...) More specifically, the article explores children as rights-holders and their rights-subject position and how these positions are supported (or not) by adults in different ways. Throughout the analysis, Greta Thunberg is used as a case study to illustrate the phenomenon under study. This new movement highlights children’s right to be heard as a valuable right. The defence of this view relies on the claim that at the heart of adult’s acknowledgement lies the uniqueness of each child and the implications of this uniqueness. Taking into consideration the realisation of children’s rights, powerful stakeholders who seek to silence children’s voices are also identified, as are worldwide adult acknowledgements intended to empower girls to exist ‘in’ and ‘with’ the world in a ‘grown-up’ way. (shrink)

For nearly a century, the French have entertained an unshakable conviction that their ability to recognize themselves-to know and transmit the essence of Frenchness-depended on the teaching of the history of France. In effect, history was a discourse on France, and the teaching of history-"la pédagogie centrale du citoyen"-the means by which children were constituted as heirs and carriers of a common collective memory that made them not only citizens, but family. In this essay, I examine the rhetorical and conceptual (...) effects on history writing that emerge out of this preoccupation with the elaboration of a continuous, coherent national identity. Focusing on schoolbooks, I begin by looking at the dominant, nearly hegemonic model of French history created by Ernest Lavisse in the 1890s-a model informed by the dream of a unified, unitary French nation, embodied in and articulated through the history of France-and at the disruption of this paradigm in the aftermath of the Great War. I then consider a text written in the 1990s specifically to repudiate the kind of nationalist narratives that prevailed for most of this century-a new supranational history of Europe. I argue that, in their different experiments with fixing history, both Lavisse and the contemporary textbook authors did not so much repair a deficient history as produce a historical fixation, creating mythicized histories that are complete, closed, predictable, and at bottom ahistorical. Finally, I turn to a recent World War I novel, A Very Long Engagement by Sébastien Japrisot, in order to suggest ways in which the narrative strategies of a fiction writer may be useful to historians in thinking about a different kind of historical project. (shrink)

Health care often involves ethically difficult situations that may disquiet the conscience. The purpose of this study was to develop a questionnaire for identifying various perceptions of conscience within a framework based on the literature and on explorative interviews about perceptions of conscience (Perceptions of Conscience Questionnaire). The questionnaire was tested on a sample of 444 registered nurses, enrolled nurses, nurses’ assistants and physicians. The data were analysed using principal component analysis to explore possible dimensions of perceptions of conscience. The (...) results showed six dimensions, found also in theory and empirical health care studies. Conscience was perceived as authority, a warning signal, demanding sensitivity, an asset, a burden and depending on culture. We conclude that the Perceptions of Conscience Questionnaire is valid for assessing some perceptions of conscience relevant to health care providers. (shrink)

The theoretical and empirical link between leadership and workplace bullying needs further elaboration. The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between quality of leadership and the occurrence of workplace bullying 2 years later. Furthermore, we aim to examine a possible mechanism from leadership to bullying using social community at work as mediator. Using survey data that were collected at two different points in time among 1664 workers from 60 Danish workplaces, we examined the total, direct and indirect (...) effects between quality of leadership and workplace bullying. Our results indicate that quality of leadership plays a role in establishing working conditions that lead to workplace bullying. Furthermore, social community at work fully mediates the effect of poor quality of leadership on workplace bullying. This longitudinal study adds to previous cross-sectional studies on the substantial role played by leaders in the bullying process. Within the leadership–bullying relationship, social community at work acts as a full mediator, adding a significant contribution to the discussion of mechanisms involved in the bullying process. Plausible explanations of this mechanism and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

In the past few years, scholars have been questioning whether the current approach in data ethics based on the higher level case studies and general principles is effective. In particular, some have been complaining that such an approach to ethics is difficult to be applied and to be taught in the context of data science. In response to these concerns, there have been discussions about how ethics should be “embedded” in the practice of data science, in the sense of showing (...) how ethical issues emerge in small technical choices made by data scientists in their day-to-day activities, and how such an approach can be used to teach data ethics. However, a precise description of how such proposals have to be theoretically conceived and could be operationalized has been lacking. In this article, we propose a full-fledged characterization of ‘embedding’ ethics, and how this can be applied especially to the problem of teaching data science ethics. Using the emerging model of ‘microethics’, we propose a way of teaching daily responsibility in digital activities that is connected to the higher level ethical challenges discussed in digital/data ethics. We ground this microethical approach into a virtue theory framework, by stressing that the goal of a microethics is to foster the cultivation of moral virtues. After delineating this approach of embedding ethics in theoretical detail, this article discusses a concrete example of how such a ‘micro-virtue ethics’ approach could be practically taught to data science students. (shrink)

:I present arguments in favour of the view that the propositions expressed by utterances containing singularly referring terms have modes of presentation of the objects referred to by those terms as constituents. I rely on recent work by Sperber and Wilson, Recanati and other pragmatists, and claim that a Fregean account of singular reference is supported by this work. This is in opposition to Recanati himself, who in his book Direct Reference has argued for a view which is closer to (...) that of some neo‐Russellians. In particular, I argue contra Recanati for the truth‐conditional relevance of the modes of presentation associated with demonstratives and other referential terms. That is, 1 argue that these modes of presentation must be seen as part of the truth‐conditional content of utterance‐tokens containing such terms. (shrink)

Introduction The mainstream view in philosophy of language is that sentence meaning determines truth-conditions. A corollary is that the truth or falsity of an utterance depends only on what words mean and how the world is arranged. Although several prominent philosophers (Searle, Travis, Recanati, Moravcsik) have challenged this view, it has proven hard to dislodge. The alternative view holds that meaning underdetermines truth-conditions. What is expressed by the utterance of a sentence in a context goes beyond what is encoded in (...) the sentence itself. Truth-conditional content depends on an indefinite number of unstated background assumptions, not all of which can be made explicit. A change in background assumptions can change truth-conditions, even bracketing disambiguation and reference assignment. That is, even after disambiguating any ambiguous words in a sentence and assigning semantic values to any indexical expressions in the sentence, truth-conditions may vary with variations in the background. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThere has considerable interest in bringing low/middle-income countries scientists into discussions on Open Data – both as contributors and users. The establishment of in situ data sharing practices within LMIC research institutions is vital for the development of an Open Data landscape in the Global South. Nonetheless, many LMICs have significant challenges – resource provision, research support and extra-laboratory infrastructures. These low-resourced environments shape data sharing activities, but are rarely examined within Open Data discourse. In particular, little attention is given (...) to how these research environments shape scientists’ perceptions of data sharing incentives. This paper expands on these issues of incentivizing data sharing, using data from a quantitative survey disseminated to life scientists in 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This interrogated not only perceptions of data sharing amongst LMIC scientists, but also how these are connected to the research environm... (shrink)

Data science skills are rapidly becoming a necessity in modern science. In response to this need, institutions and organizations around the world are developing research data science curricula to teach the programming and computational skills that are needed to build and maintain data infrastructures and maximize the use of available data. To date, however, few of these courses have included an explicit ethics component, and developing such components can be challenging. This paper describes a novel approach to teaching data ethics (...) on short courses developed for the CODATA-RDA Schools for Research Data Science. The ethics content of these schools is centred on the concept of open and responsible science citizenship that draws on virtue ethics to promote ethics of practice. Despite having little formal teaching time, this concept of citizenship is made central to the course by distributing ethics content across technical modules. Ethics instruction consists of a wide range of techniques, including stand-alone lectures, group discussions and mini-exercises linked to technical modules. This multi-level approach enables students to develop an understanding both of “responsible and open science citizenship”, and of how such responsibilities are implemented in daily research practices within their home environment. This approach successfully locates ethics within daily data science practice, and allows students to see how small actions build into larger ethical concerns. This emphasises that ethics are not something “removed from daily research” or the remit of data generators/end users, but rather are a vital concern for all data scientists. (shrink)

In recent months months the hashtag #overlyhonestmethods has steadily been gaining popularity. Posts under this hashtag—presumably by scientists—detail aspects of daily scientific research that differ considerably from the idealized interpretation of scientific experimentation as standardized, objective and reproducible. Over and above its entertainment value, the popularity of this hashtag raises two important points for those who study both science and scientists. Firstly, the posts highlight that the generation of data through experimentation is often far less standardized than is commonly assumed. (...) Secondly, the popularity of the hashtag together with its relatively blasé reception by the scientific community reveal that the actions reported in the tweets are far from shocking and indeed may be considered just “part of scientific research”. Such observations give considerable pause for thought, and suggest that current conceptions of data might be limited by failing to recognize this “inherent variability” within the actions of generation—and thus within data themselves. Is it possible, we must ask, that epistemic virtues such as standardization, consistency, reportability and reproducibility need to be reevaluated? Such considerations are, of course, of particular importance to data sharing discussions and the Open Data movement. This paper suggests that the notion of a “moral professionalism” for data generation and sharing needs to be considered in more detail if the inherent variability of data are to be addressed in any meaningful manner. (shrink)

According to one widely held view of metaphor, metaphors are cases in which the speaker (literally) says one thing but means something else instead. I wish to challenge this idea. I will argue that when one utters a sentence in some context intending it to be understood metaphorically, one directly expresses a proposition, which can potentially be evaluated as either true or false. This proposition is what is said by the utterance of the sentence in that context. We don’t convey (...) metaphorical meanings indirectly by directly saying something else. One consequence is that, contrary to what Searle (1993: 110) suggests, we do not arrive at the metaphorical meaning that the speaker intended via a literal interpretation of the sentence the speaker utters. The defense of this view depends on articulating a conception of what is said that is more generous than that allowed for by Searle (1993) and others such as Bach (2001). I hope to motivate this broadened conception of what is said (what I call a contextualist conception of what is said), and to show some of the benefits of adopting a direct expression view of metaphor. (shrink)

The concept of dual-use encapsulates the potential for well-intentioned, beneficial scientific research to also be misused by a third party for malicious ends. The concept of dual-use challenges scientists to look beyond the immediate outcomes of their research and to develop an awareness of possible future (mis)uses of scientific research. Since 2001 much attention has been paid to the possible need to regulate the dual-use potential of the life sciences. Regulation initiatives fall under two broad categories—those that develop the ethical (...) education of scientists and foster an awareness and responsibility of dual-use issues, and those which assess the regulation of information being generated by current research. Both types of initiatives are premised on a cautious, risk-adverse philosophy which advocates careful examination of all future endpoints of research endeavors. This caution advocated within initiatives such as pre-publication review of journal articles contrasts to the obligation to share underpinning data sharing discussions. As the dual-use debate has yet to make a significant impact on data sharing discussions (and vice versa) it is possible that these two areas of knowledge control may present areas of ethical conflict for scientists, and thus need to be more closely examined. This paper examines the tension between the obligation to share exemplified by data sharing principles and the concerns raised by the risk-cautious culture of the dual-use debates. The paper concludes by reflecting on the issues of responsibility as raised by dual-use as relating to data sharing, such as the chain of custody for shared data. (shrink)

Grimberg identifies four arguments which she alleges are used in my paper‘Pragmatics and Singular Reference’(Bezuidenhout, 1996a) in order to establish the truth-conditional relevance of de re modes of presentation. In fact, only one of these, properly understood, is an argument which I would endorse. However, I do plead guilty to having used examples with features which misleadingly suggest that I endorse these various arguments. It is an easy matter to construct examples free from these defects, which is what I (...) attempt to do. (shrink)

Studies of science are increasingly drawing attention to the highly communal nature of research. Ethics, sociology, philosophy, and anthropology of science all emphasize the key role that collaborative actions play in the generation of scientific knowledge. Nonetheless, despite the increasing interest in these communal aspects of scientific research, studies on the relationships underpinning communality are commonly focused on the how the individual interacts with their peers and contributes to the epistemic activities of science. In contrast, there is little literature that (...) broadens out the scope of this analysis to consider the multidimensional nature of these research relationships. In particular, little is said about how scientists mediate their social interactions with peers during daily laboratory research. Less, indeed, is said about the tradition of ‘learning through example’ that characterizes most in situ laboratory training.All of these relational activities are of critical importance in sustaining and perpetuating the practice of science. It therefore becomes important to ask how we understand these relational activities directed towards building and sustaining relationships in different loci for the primary purpose of strengthening the practice of research and sustaining the traditions of scientific research. Moreover, it is vital to consider how discussions on responsibility may be cached out for individual scientists.This article employs a virtue ethics approach to consider these issues. It begins by sketching out the plethora of different relationships present in daily laboratory practice using existing ethnographic studies. It then uses virtue ethics to identify specific responsibilities that individual scientists have in cultivating and safeguarding the development of these relationships. It concludes by suggesting ways in which these issues may be taken up in teaching responsible conduct to scientists. (shrink)

BackgroundThe widespread sharing of biological and biomedical data is recognised as a key element in facilitating translation of scientific discoveries into novel clinical applications and services. At the same time, twenty-first century states are increasingly concerned that this data could also be used for purposes of bioterrorism. There is thus a tension between the desire to promote the sharing of data, as encapsulated by the Open Data movement, and the desire to prevent this data from ‘falling into the wrong hands’ (...) as represented by ‘dual use’ policies. Both frameworks posit a moral duty for life sciences researchers with respect to how they should make their data available. However, Open data and dual use concerns are rarely discussed in concert and their implementation can present scientists with potentially conflicting ethical requirements.DiscussionBoth dual use and Open data policies frame scientific data and data dissemination in particular, though different, ways. As such they contain implicit models for how data is translated. Both approaches are limited by a focus on abstract conceptions of data and data sharing. This works to impede consensus-building between the two ethical frameworks. As an alternative, this paper proposes that an ethics of responsible management of scientific data should be based on a more nuanced understanding of the everyday data practices of life scientists. Responsibility for these ‘micromovements’ of data must consider the needs and duties of scientists as individuals and as collectively-organised groups.SummaryResearchers in the life sciences are faced with conflicting ethical responsibilities to share data as widely as possible, but prevent it being used for bioterrorist purposes. In order to reconcile the responsibilities posed by the Open Data and dual use frameworks, approaches should focus more on the everyday practices of laboratory scientists and less on abstract conceptions of data. (shrink)

In this chapter, we propose a non-traditional RCR training in data science that is grounded in a virtue theory framework. First, we delineate the approach in more theoretical detail by discussing how the goal of RCR training is to foster the cultivation of certain moral abilities. We specify the nature of these ‘abilities’: while the ideal is the cultivation of virtues, the limited space allowed by RCR modules can only facilitate the cultivation of superficial abilities or proto-virtues, which help students (...) to familiarize themselves with moral and political issues in the data science environment. Third, we operationalize our approach by stressing that (proto-)virtue acquisition (like skill acquisition) occurs through the technical and social tasks of daily data science activities, where these repetitive tasks provide the opportunities to develop (proto-)virtue capacity and to support the development of ethically robust data systems. Finally, we discuss a concrete example of implementing this approach. In particular, we describe how this method is applied to teach data ethics to students participating in the CODATA-RDA Data Science Summer Schools. (shrink)

Responsibility within life science research is a highly scrutinised field. Increasingly, scientists are presented with a range of duties and expectations regarding their conduct within the research setting. In many cases, these duties are presented deontologically, forgoing extensive discussion on how these are practically implemented into the minutiae of daily research practices. This de-contextualized duty has proven problematic when it comes to practical issues of compliance, however it is not often considered as a fundamental aspect of building ethics discourse. This (...) paper examines this issue in detail, particularly focusing on how differences in the contrasts between the ideal and real physical research environments cause conceptual problems for scientists and retard ethical engagement. Such issues are particularly pertinent in low- and middle-income countries. This paper combines theoretical and empirical analyses using the concept of “dual-use” as a focalizing topic. The data show that the research environment acts as an intimate component in the interpretation and implementation of ethical actions. (shrink)

In recent years there have been major shifts in how the role of science—and scientists—are understood. The critical examination of scientific expertise within the field of Science and Technology Studies are increasingly eroding notions of the “otherness” of scientists. It would seem to suggest that anyone can be a scientist—when provided with the appropriate training and access to data. In contrast, however, ethnographic evidence from the scientific community tells a different story. Scientists are quick to recognize that not everyone can—or (...) should—be a scientist. Appealing to notions such as “good hands” or “gut feelings”, scientists narrate a distinction between good and bad scientists that cannot be reduced to education, access, or opportunity. The key to good science requires scientists to express an intuitive feeling for their discipline, but also that individuals derive considerable personal satisfaction from their work. Discussing this personal joy in—and “fittingness” of—scientific occupations using the fields of STS, ethics and science policy is highly problematic. In this paper we turn to theology discourse to analyze the notion of “callings” as a means of understanding this issue. Callings highlight the identification and examination of individual talents to determine fit occupations for specific persons. Framing science as a calling represents a novel view of research that places the talents and dispositions of individuals and their relationship to the community at the center of flourishing practices. (shrink)

Most scientists recognize the importance of sharing data online in an open fashion. Nonetheless, many studies have documented the concerns that accompany data sharing activities, including loss of credit or IP, misuse and the time needed to curate interoperable data. To this end, discussions around data sharing often identify incentives that could potentially ameliorate these disincentivising concerns. Nonetheless, current Open Data discussions often rely on evidence‐based studies to identify the disincentives to overcome. This results in highly specific and directed interventions. (...) In contrast, this paper offers a different interpretation of these concerns. To do so, it makes use of the Thomas Theorem which suggests that: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”. Using empirical evidence from sub‐Saharan African (bio)chemistry laboratories, this paper illustrates how individual perceptions of research environments – whether associated with evidence or not – are highly influential in shaping data sharing practices. It concludes with the suggestion that discussion on incentivising data sharing amongst scientific communities need to take a broader set of concerns into account and offer a more creative approach to ameliorating environmental disincentives. (shrink)

In a recent paper titled “Content Preservation”, Tyler Burge argues that certain psychological processes play a purely preservative role, and not a justificatory role. Burge’s claim is that the justificatory force of the beliefs sustained by these processes is independent of features of these processes, such as their reliability. The function of these psychological processes is merely to preserve the beliefs in order to “assure the proper working of other cognitive capacities over time”. In particular, Burge claims that the memory (...) processes underlying deductive reasoning and the psychological processes underlying verbal communication are purely preservative. (shrink)

I distinguish between the classical Gricean approach to conversational implicatures , which I call the action-theoretic approach, and the approach to CIs taken in contemporary cognitive science. Once we free ourselves from the AT account, and see implicating as a form of what I call “conversational tailoring”, we can more easily see the many different ways that CIs arise in conversation. I will show that they arise not only on the basis of a speaker’s utterance of complete sentences but also (...) on the basis of sub-sentential clauses—cases of so-called embedded implicatures—as well as from discourse segments containing several sentences—cases that Geurts calls ‘multiplicatures’. I will argue that they arise also from contents that are themselves implicit, such as presupposed contents or other implicatures. All but the first sort of case are difficult for the traditional Gricean AT account to handle, whereas they fall naturally out of an account that sees conversational participants as engaged in conversational tailoring—i.e., as engaged in a process of shaping informational and discourse structural properties of utterances in their successive conversational turns, and hence shaping their interlocutors’ cognitive environments. (shrink)

Development-oriented funding schemes such as the UK Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) have opened up opportunities for collaborations between low-middle income countries (LMICs) and high-income country (HIC) researchers. In particular, funding for medical technology research has seen a rise in previously under-represented disciplines such as physics and engineering. These collaborations have considerable potential to advance healthcare in LMICs, yet can pose challenges experienced to researchers undertaking these collaborations. Key challenges include a lack of tradition of HIC/LMIC collaborations within participating departments, (...) lack of experience with development agendas, designing contextually-appropriate technologies and ensuring long-term viability of research outputs. This paper reflects on these key challenges, using the experiences of the authors on the Open Laboratory Instrumentation (OLI) project as a focalizing lens. This project was a GCRF-funded collaboration between physicists in the UK and engineers in Tanzania to develop an open-source, 3D-printed, fully-automated laboratory microscope. The paper highlights key ethics lessons learnt. (shrink)

Development-oriented funding schemes such as the UK Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) have opened up opportunities for collaborations between low-middle income countries (LMICs) and high-income country (HIC) researchers. In particular, funding for medical technology research has seen a rise in previously under-represented disciplines such as physics and engineering. These collaborations have considerable potential to advance healthcare in LMICs, yet can pose challenges experienced to researchers undertaking these collaborations. Key challenges include a lack of tradition of HIC/LMIC collaborations within participating departments, (...) lack of experience with development agendas, designing contextually-appropriate technologies and ensuring long-term viability of research outputs. This paper reflects on these key challenges, using the experiences of the authors on the Open Laboratory Instrumentation (OLI) project as a focalizing lens. This project was a GCRF-funded collaboration between physicists in the UK and engineers in Tanzania to develop an open-source, 3D-printed, fully-automated laboratory microscope. The paper highlights key ethics lessons learnt. (shrink)

Development-oriented funding schemes such as the UK Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) have opened up opportunities for collaborations between low-middle income countries (LMICs) and high-income country (HIC) researchers. In particular, funding for medical technology research has seen a rise in previously under-represented disciplines such as physics and engineering. These collaborations have considerable potential to advance healthcare in LMICs, yet can pose challenges experienced to researchers undertaking these collaborations. Key challenges include a lack of tradition of HIC/LMIC collaborations within participating departments, (...) lack of experience with development agendas, designing contextually-appropriate technologies and ensuring long-term viability of research outputs. This paper reflects on these key challenges, using the experiences of the authors on the Open Laboratory Instrumentation (OLI) project as a focalizing lens. This project was a GCRF-funded collaboration between physicists in the UK and engineers in Tanzania to develop an open-source, 3D-printed, fully-automated laboratory microscope. The paper highlights key ethics lessons learnt. (shrink)

The life sciences are increasingly being called on to produce “socially robust” knowledge that honors the social contract between science and society. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of “broad social issues” that reflect the ethical tensions in these social contracts. These issues are framed in a variety of ways around the world, evidenced by differences in regulations addressing them. It is important to question whether these variations are simply regulatory variations or in fact reflect a contextual (...) approach to ethics that brings into question the existence of a system of “global scientific ethics”. Nonetheless, within ethics education for scientists these broad social issues are often presented using this scheme of global ethics due to legacies of science ethics pedagogy. This paper suggests this may present barriers to fostering international discourse between communities of scientists, and may cause difficulties in harmonizing (and transporting) national regulations for the governance of these issues. Reinterpreting these variations according to how the content of ethical principles is attributed by communities is proposed as crucial for developing a robust international discourse. To illustrate this, the paper offers some empirical fieldwork data that considers how the concept of dual-use (as a broad social issue) was discussed within African and UK laboratories. Demonstrating that African scientists reshaped the concept of dual-use according to their own research environmental pressures and ascribed alternative content to the principles that underpin it, suggests that the limitations of a “global scientific ethics” system for these issues cannot be ignored. (shrink)

Cappelen and Lepore (2005) begin their critique of contextualism with an anecdote about an exercise they do with their undergraduate students (who I take it are meant to be naïve subjects whose linguistic intuitions have not been contaminated by mistaken philosophical theories). The test is to ask students to categorize types of expressions. Students quickly get the hang of the idea that referring expressions (like indexicals and pronouns) belong to a single category. They’re then asked whether they think that common (...) nouns like ‘penguin’ or adjectives like ‘red’ belong to this category, and of course students are reluctant to see any similarity here. Students are then told that, as incredible as it may seem, there are philosophers (called contextualists) who think that the indexical ‘I’ and the common noun ‘penguin’ belong to the same category and who think that these types of expressions are context-sensitive in just the same way. (shrink)