Most contemporary conflicts can be characterized as ‘wars or conflicts amongst the people’. International military forces deployed in such conflicts are confronted with complex operational environments where the distinction between combatants and non-combatants is often impossible to make. At the same time, there is a moral requirement imposed on Western coalition forces to perform in a humane manner and to keep casualties to a minimum. Non-lethal weapons are expected to enable military forces to accomplish their mission without having to (...) kill or destroy. The extent to which these weapons meet that promise in real world conditions is the subject of debate. A defence technology assessment of non-lethal weapons is proposed that validates their utility and moral implications by considering the user, the weapon and the target in the context of the deployment situation. It will be illustrated that the technical parameters of the non-lethal weapons are no guarantee that the weapons will perform as intended as the user and target introduce many factors of uncertainty in real world situations. Although such uncertainties undermine the moral acceptability of non-lethal weapons, it is argued that the principle of non-lethality is compliant with the Just War Tradition principle of proportionality. The principles of non-combatant immunity and discrimination need to be re-calibrated given the human-centricity of many military intervention operations. (shrink)

Artikkelen undersøker hvordan NIPT ble vedtatt implementert i det norske fosterdiagnostiske systemet gjennom en fagligpolitisk prosess mellom 2012 og 2017. Prosessen innebar at Nasjonalt kunnskapssenter for helsetjenesten, Helsedirektoratet, Bioteknologirådet og Helse- og Omsorgsdepartementet ga sine vurderinger av testen og sine råd omkring en eventuell innføring. Artikkelen viser at det i denne prosessen foregikk en forsiktig tilnærming eller sammensmelting mellom de tradisjonelt helt ulike måtene å forstå og å ramme inn fosterdiagnostikk på i Norge, dvs. i en ‘autonomi/ behandlingsramme’ og en (...) ‘sorteringsramme’. Artikkelen argumenterer videre for at denne tilnærmingen eller konvergensen var mulig fordi prosessen ble holdt innenfor de fagligpolitiske byråkratiene, og de ulike etatene var innstilt på å ‘samarbeide’ om å inkludere både kunnskap og verdier fra begge rammene i sine tilrådninger. Politikk for fosterdiagnostikk er imidlertid et svært politisk betent område i Norge, og denne konvergensen var et skjørt byggverk. Den sprakk da også opp i løpet av tre uker i mai 2020, da Fremskrittspartiet plutselig inngikk et ‘bioteknologiforlik’ med Arbeiderpartiet og SV etter at de hadde gått ut av Solbergregjeringen. Dermed endte spørsmålet om implementeringen av NIPT i Stortinget, hvor konvergensen i den fagpolitiske prosessen ble erstattet av de tradisjonelle frontene, og de gamle innrammingene igjen ble ‘satt i arbeid’. Artikkelen diskuterer avslutningsvis kort de bortimot uløselige dilemmaene disse innrammingene både representerer og produserer. Nøkkelord: NIPT, fosterdiagnostikk, humanmedisinsk bioteknologi, regulering English Title: Fetal diagnostics between medicine and ethics: Implementation of Prenatal Invasive Testing in a turbulent policy area: The article examines how the decision to implement Prenatal Invasive Testing in the Norwegian Fetal Diagnostic System was reached through a professional policy process between 2012 and 2017. The process involved the Norwegian Research Centre for Health Services, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, the Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board and the Ministry of Health and Care Services, which provided their individual assessments and advice regarding the potential implementation of the test. The article finds that a careful convergence took place between traditionally opposing ways to understand and frame fetal diagnostics in Norway – either as a ‘treatment frame’ or a ‘sorting frame’. The article further argues that this convergence was possible because the process was kept within these bureaucracies, and that the different agencies were willing to collaborate to include knowledge and values from both frames in their recommendations. However, policy for fetal diagnostics is a very turbulent political area in Norway, and this convergence was a fragile construction. During three weeks in May 2020, the convergence collapsed when the Norwegian Progress Party suddenly entered a “biotechnology settlement” with the Labour Party and the Socialist Left Party after exiting the conservative Government coalition. Hence, the question of implementing NIPT ended up in the Norwegian Parliament, where the convergence from the professional policy process was replaced by the traditional fronts, and the old framings were again set in motion. Lastly, the article briefly discusses the almost unsolvable dilemmas these framings both produce and represent. Keywords: NIPT, non-invasive prenatal testing, fetal diagnostics, medical biotechnology, regulation. (shrink)

In October 2010, the German conservative ruling coalition and Free Democratic Party ) passed a law permitting the extension of contracts for Germany’s seventeen nuclear power plants. This policy amended a law passed in 2001 by a Social Democratic Party and Green Party majority to phase out nuclear energy by the early 2020s. The explosions in the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility, however, resulted in a decision to speed up the phaseout of nuclear energy. The (...) nuclear meltdowns in Japan sent hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets. Angry voters made their disillusionment with the nuclear politics of the conservative government coalition clear in local elections. The federal government responded by setting up an Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply, which recommended an end to nuclear energy and a shift to a renewable energy-based economy. Within months of the Fukushima disaster, the government had permanently shut down eight of the country’s oldest nuclear power plants and issued a schedule for the phased shutdown of the remaining nine plants by 2022. In addition, the government reaffirmed its climate change plans, which call for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by around forty percent of 1990 levels by 2020 and eighty percent by 2050. Thus, out of a crisis, the German government is forging an opportunity to become a global leader in the promotion of new renewable energies, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas emission reductions. In Japan, the nuclear crisis has also weakened support for nuclear energy, but with a strong industrial coalition calling for its continued use, both for energy stability and in response to climate change, a complete nuclear phaseout is less certain, at least in the short term. (shrink)

Despite projected devastating impacts on human communities, the US still lacks comprehensive national policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This vacuum has provided the space for a surge of promising sustainability and climate action planning efforts at the state and local level. Meanwhile, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (2015) Out of Reach Report, ‘there is no state in the US where a minimum wage worker working full time can afford a one-bedroom apartment at the fair (...) market rent’. We are calling for a reimagining of local climate action planning that encourages policies and programs designed to reduce GHG emissions from the built environment while explicitly and comprehensively addressing the affordability component. With equitable local climate action planning, we can address both environmental and social justice issues. (shrink)

The legal order of the oceans has seen rapid developments and paradigm shifts. At least one of them has been described as a textbook example of a Grotian Moment: the emergence of the customary international law on the continental shelf, stemming from increased demand for oil and gas, coupled with technological advances and the Truman Proclamation of 1945. Now, eighty years later, the law of the sea is again faced with fundamental changes as the basis for maritime limits is eroded (...) by sea level rise. State practice, going back at least a century, has demonstrated that maritime limits normally fluctuate with physical changes to the coast. This understanding has not caused significant changes to the extent or location of maritime entitlements in a historical context. However, sea level rise stands to have catastrophic impacts as the submergence of individual coastal features can cause the loss of maritime areas spanning hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. This realisation has ignited a movement to change the law on maritime limits. Around 2010, the first States began to declare that their maritime limits would be stable, notwithstanding subsequent sea level rise. Several States and a coalition of States have since made similar declarations and the study of the ila Committee on International Law and Sea Level Rise indicates that the practice is in a phase of crystallisation. That suggests that new customary international law may be developing and the events leading to these developments might justify the use of the term Grotian Moment, leading to accelerated formation of customary international law or revised interpretation of the current law. The traditional requirements of State practice and opinio juris are not satisfied at present. However, the impacts of sea level rise on maritime limits may represent a moment of discovery that unveils a hidden truth about the law, overriding the traditional interpretation that renders maritime limits ambulatory. (shrink)

Many governments and corporations have embraced information disclosure as an alternative to conventional environmental and public health regulation. Public policy research on transparency has examined the effects of particular disclosure policies, but there is limited research on how the construction of disclosure policies relates to social movements, or how transparency and ignorance are related. As a first step toward filling this theoretical gap, this study seeks to conceptualize disclosure conflicts, the social processes through which secrecy is challenged, defended, and mobilized (...) in public technoscientific controversies. In the case of shale oil and gas development in the United States, activists and policy makers have demanded information about the contents of fluids used in the extraction process and the routes of oil shipments by rail. Drilling and railroad companies have resisted both demands. Studies of such disputes reveal the dynamic and conflictual nature of information disclosure. In both cases, disclosure conflicts unfold dynamically over time, reflecting power disparities between industry groups and their challengers and requiring coalitions of activists to pursue multiple tactics. When a disclosure policy is established, it does not resolve social conflict but shifts the focus of struggle to the design of information systems, the quality of disclosed data, and the knowledge gaps that are now illuminated. (shrink)

On Gandhian philosophy, socialism, and communism.

Why is a red face not really red? How do we decide that this book is a textbook or not? Conceptual spaces provide the medium on which these computations are performed, but an additional operation is needed: Contrast. By contrasting a reddish face with a prototypical face, one gets a prototypical ‘red’. By contrasting this book with a prototypical textbook, the lack of exercises may pop out. Dynamic contrasting is an essential operation for converting perceptions into predicates. The existence of (...) dynamic contrasting may contribute to explaining why lexical meanings correspond to convex regions of conceptual spaces. But it also explains why predication is most of the time opportunistic, depending on context. While off-line conceptual similarity is a holistic operation, the contrast operation provides a context-dependent distance that creates ephemeral predicative judgments that are essential for interfacing conceptual spaces with natural language and with reasoning. (shrink)

***Angaben zur beteiligten Person Kühn: Dr. Sebastian Kühn, wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter.

This paper deals with the problem of what otherness consists in, and what its foundation is, within the I–Other relation. In this way, the study also explores the limits of ethics and of a quasi-religious attitude, in order to establish what is required to shape interpersonal relations in a non-violent way, when faced with the radical otherness of another human being. Such an investigation also intersects with a broader ethical discussion that aims to take account of glorious or heroic acts, (...) focused on the issue of supererogation. The aim of the present study is to demonstrate the degree to which a neglect of reciprocity and justice in the context of such philosophical research constitutes a risky step. To this end, the main aspects of the debate between Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur are introduced. After examining the position of Levinas, and how Ricoeur interprets the I–Other relation in Levinas, an attempt is made to assess whether the latter’s line of criticism is pertinent and helpful for attempts to arrive at the core of the disagreement between the two thinkers. (shrink)

Study of Parāśaragītā, portion of Śāntiparva of Mahābhārata; includes Sanskrit text with Hindi translation.

The book links the concept of intention to human action. It provides answers to questions like: Why do we act intentionally? Which impact do reasons and motives have on our decisions? Certain events are identified as intentional actions when they are considered as being rationalized by reasons. The linguistic description of such events enables us to reveal the structure of intention. The mental and the linguistic constitute irreducible ways of understanding events. Among the topics discussed are intentionality, actions, the linguistic (...) form to talk about intentionality and actions, Brentano’s view of intentionality, the phenomenological approach to intention and Wittgenstein's proposals. (shrink)

The book links the concept of intention to human action. It provides answers to questions like: Why do we act intentionally? Which impact do reasons and motives have on our decisions? Certain events are identified as intentional actions when they are considered as being rationalized by reasons. The linguistic description of such events enables us to reveal the structure of intention. The mental and the linguistic constitute irreducible ways of understanding events. Among the topics discussed are intentionality, actions, the linguistic (...) form to talk about intentionality and actions, Brentano’s view of intentionality, the phenomenological approach to intention and Wittgenstein's proposals. The contributions by Wolfgang Künne, Peter Simons, Christian Bermes, Kevin Mulligan, Severin Schroeder, António Marques, Margit Gaffal, Michel Le Du, Jesús Padilla Gálvez, Bernhard Obsieger and Amir Horowitz show that actions and decisions are guided by intentional considerations. (shrink)

This volume gathers papers, which were read at the congress held at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo (Spain), in September 2007, under the general subject of phenomenology. The book is devoted to Wittgenstein’s thoughts on phenomenology. One of its aims is to consider and examine the lasting importance of phenomenology for philosophic discussion. For E. Husserl phenomenology was a discipline that endeavoured to describe how the world is constituted and experienced through a series of conscious acts. His fundamental (...) concept was that of intentional consciousness. What did drag Wittgenstein into working on phenomenology? In his 'middle period' work, Wittgenstein used the headline 'Phenomenology is Grammar'. These cornerstones can be signalled by notions like language, grammar, rule, visual space versus Euclidean space, minima visibilia and colours. L. Wittgenstein’s main interest takes the form of a research on language. (shrink)